How to Talk to Children About Scary World Events

from How Not to Screw Up Your Kids

32m 29s

How to Talk to Children About Scary World Events

This podcast episode, hosted by Dr. Mary Hand, focuses on how parents can discuss scary world events with their children, using the 2022 Russia-Ukraine situation as a timely example while noting the advice applies to climate change, riots, and other crises. Hand first provides context, explaining that children today live in a digital era where global information is instantly accessible, meaning that if parents do not answer their children's questions, children will search for answers themselves and may find unreliable information. She identifies three things parents should be mindful of: ignoring the situation, assuming a child is not worried simply because they have not mentioned it, and forgetting that children pick up on the concerns of parents, teachers, and peers. Parents must also check in with themselves about their own anxieties. Hand then offers five key strategies: fact-check by focusing on what is known for sure and avoiding speculation; be honest with children and with oneself about feelings; acknowledge children's fears by meeting them where they are; help children build a toolkit of techniques such as breathing exercises and physical activities; and help children create perspective through a balloon drawing exercise and a daily written gratitude practice. She emphasizes that dismissing fears will cause children to close off and seek information elsewhere.

Transcription

4368 Words, 23409 Characters

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Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 39 and in this episode I want to tackle the complex subject of how do we have conversations with our children about scary world events. Now, if you're listening to this episode in March, February, March 2022, you may find this relevant for explaining to your children about what's happening with Ukraine and Russia. However, the advice I am going to give is relevant across a number of issues, whether it's climate change, wars, riots, unrest or widely publicised prosecutions. Anything which bursts our children's bubble of the world being an inherently good, unsafe place, this podcast will help. So, I'm going to tackle this by giving some context first because I think that's really important. Then I think it's really important I start with the things that we should be mindful of doing before we even move on to my usual top five tips to tackle these difficult subjects and being able to tackle it in a way which, I don't know, feels positive given the challenging subject that we're going to be talking about, but it feels positive for you So, let's start with a bit of context because I think this is really important. So, there are going to be times when the world will feel a really scary place for our children and our teens. Living in a digital era where global information is literally at our fingertips has opened up the world to us. You know, we know so much about so much of the world because of this, but it has also brought with it rolling news when disasters and wars strike. So, we must be really aware of this background context whenever something happens in the world. And I say this because if we don't answer our children and our teens' questions or we don't seek to have those conversations with them in advance and in good time, they'll simply search for their own answers because they've got these at their fingertips. They can Google, they can check things, and the information that they get won't always be evidence-based, so that's why we need to be thinking about this. So, I just want you to be thought to sort of think about this and have that context in your mind constantly when these sort of situations arise because the world is ever-changing. Things come up all of the time. Sometimes things come up and they don't become anything more. Sometimes they come up and they then escalate. So, it's being mindful of when we have scenarios where our children feel that their bubble of the world being an inherently safe space is lost. or a change in our climate which affects how we live is something that feels really scary. scary and it's something that you that makes you worried the world feels really scary and unsafe right now it's this kind of language that we want to be using instead whatever it is that your child is feeling meet them there and at that emotion meet them at that dark place that they've taken themselves to and by doing so you acknowledge their fears and they feel heard so just a quick recap before we move into the actual five strategies so we've talked about the context that our children are living in a digital era that if we don't have conversations with them that they will only search for things themselves and by searching they may not necessarily get the evidence-based truths i've reminded you to be mindful of three things i've asked you to be mindful of ignoring the situation or assuming that just because your child hasn't mentioned it to you that they're not worried and i've also asked you to be mindful of the fact that children pick up on other people's concerns whether that's yours whether that's their friends their teachers or people significant adults or peers and that that is a really important aspect that we need to be mindful of and also when we're thinking about the fact that our children pick up on other people's concerns it's if we have our own concerns and our own anxieties we need to check in with ourselves about what might we need to do to manage our own anxieties and our own fears maybe we're becoming slightly obsessive with watching the news maybe we're constantly checking our news feed on our mobile phones or checking things that way so it's being aware of how that might also impact our children and then being mindful that in the process of trying to reassure our children we might be dismissing their concerns and that will then mean that our children are likely to close in and not come back to us so we've got the context we know the things that we need to be actually doing what are those things and i have five these are my five key things that we should be doing the first is to fact check so focus on what you know for sure and don't try to minimize your child's anxieties with your own speculation such as that could never happen instead use language such as what we know for sure for example is that world leaders would think very carefully before starting a war or scientists will be doing all that they can they can to understand what might be happening with the world in terms of climate change you know it's these sorts of things and we can keep ourselves safer from storms by staying home for example if that is genuinely the fact check at the time what we want to do is reframe what we know for sure and avoid the sticky ground which we don't know and the reality is if we're thinking about it from the perspective of what's happening in ukraine is that we do not know for sure that other countries may not get involved that this could spread further and the other countries are then also involved so don't go into that sticky place where you're on shaky ground which you don't know but stick to what you do know so what we do know is that countries don't enter into wars without some some consideration about the consequences of that so it's thinking that through so that our communication style is appropriate if your child says something which seems plausible scary but plausible acknowledge their feelings ask them where they got that information from and agree to do some probing from some more reliable sources so again going back to the situation specifically because it's quite topical but it will be the same for other things but for example in the situation in ukraine with russia if they have put a plausible but scary comment around nuclear weapons ask them where they got that information from then it's about doing some probing to get reliable sources our children have so much access to technology and to information and it's about making sure that the information that they're getting is reliable and that we can have proper conversations with them about how reliable is that source where does this information come from and again we can stick to the fact that what we know for sure and we can acknowledge and reassure on the sticky ground of the things that we don't know but may well be plausible and the things that we know for sure will not happen because they've read something and for example that might be quite outrageous in terms of it's taken something to an nth degree so it might be around climate control it might be around climate control and it might be very specific to information that might say that i don't know homes are going to suddenly start exploding because of temperatures we can fact check that we can be really clear that that isn't going to happen on the basis of the combustible nature of homes for example so there are some things that our children are going to come to us that we can be absolutely sure is not going to happen but where it is plausible even if it's scary but it is plausible we need to have those conversations around probing and then looking at where this information is coming from so we can address it we need to be honest with our children because if we don't have that then our children are going to get that information from somewhere else so the first thing we do is fact check the second thing is really very much related but goes beyond this as well as we need to be honest we need to be honest when we don't know we need to be honest when we're also feeling anxious we need to be honest about our own feelings we need to be honest about some of the sources of information and we also need to be honest with ourselves about how we're managing a situation we've talked about areas that we need to be mindful of with our children about being mindful that our children can pick up on other people's concerns so we need to be honest with ourselves as to whether some of the anxieties that our children are exhibiting and that are showing are actually coming from us from the way that we're managing the situation maybe we're not managing a situation particularly well maybe a world event has triggered something for us maybe it's brought back something from our own childhood maybe there's been a storm and we've got memories of something happening to a close relative someone that we loved in a previous storm maybe there is some triggering in terms of a riot maybe that the subject matter is something that feels very personal we must be honest about what we tell our children but also what we're telling ourselves and how these world events are also affecting us so the first thing we need to do is fact check the second thing we need to do is about being honest with our children but also being honest with ourselves the third thing is we need to acknowledge their fears it is so important that we meet our children where they are at because that is how they are experiencing that particular situation so we need to make sure that we are mindful to that that we have a verbalize and acknowledge i can see that this feels really scary to you and it is scary not not knowing the idea that this might happen or that might happen we need to make sure that we are having those honest conversations with our children and acknowledging those fears because if we don't acknowledge those fears then they won't come back to us and this is where they then seek information elsewhere the fourth thing and these are some of the important practical things that we then can start doing with our children is we need to talk about techniques to help them manage the fear and the anxiety so for those of you who've listened to my podcast previously on anxiety and if you haven't go back to that because there's some really great techniques and real practical applications in terms of how to help support children with practical tools but it's also a really practical explanation of what is anxiety so that we can understand how is this manifesting itself for our children so we need to start having conversations with our children about strategies and techniques that they can use and employ when the fear and the anxiety gets too much when they feel overwhelmed so it may be about practical distracting things it may be about doing some coloring it might be jumping on a trampoline it might be playing a game it may be building some lego or it may be that those things can be used in conjunction with some very specific techniques in terms of breathing techniques so again i would suggest that you go back to my previous podcast episodes around anxiety and confidence so strategies and breathing techniques such as take 10 such as the 7-11 or square breathing ways that we can help our children's anxiety and their fight or flight instinct which gets triggered when they are feeling anxious and worried because they are basically their body's trying to protect them it's keeping them away from that fear and getting them ready to run away or fight the enemy so it's helping them with that and helping them practice the techniques and what's really important with these particularly with breathing techniques is that you do them with them do them together show your child how they can use these strategies and how it's calming for them as well as yourself so talk about different techniques talk to them about what might be their toolkit at those moments where they're overwhelmed and talking about it to you might be one strategy but they need more than simply talking to you because there'll be periods of time maybe they're at school where they feel anxious and so we want them to be able to use techniques which help themselves so that's one of the tips number four and then the fifth one is about helping our children create some perspective now when we're caught in overwhelm or fear or anxiety or worry our attention tends to focus on that we are primed and we are tuned in to those particular fears and those anxieties and those worries so we tend to pick up on other situations which are also fearful so what can then happen is is one aspect of a child's world whether that's climate change whether that there's an anxiety around a fear of a storm or other things that might be happening in perspective that is one bit so what we're trying to do is we're not trying to minimize it we're not trying to go from that's a negative thing and these are all the positives and you should be grateful you should be thinking about all the wonderful things that are happening in your life that's not the right approach because that's dismissive of their fears we want to acknowledge those fears but what we then want to do is we want to help our children gain some form of perspective about how this particular worry sits across a multitude of other aspects of their life because it goes back to this you know we have this cognitive illness that tends to want to pick up on all of the information in our environment which supports what's going on at the time and if we're in this space of fear and worry we're going to pick up more fear and worry so we want to help our children reframe it and place it within perspective now one of the techniques that i love to use and it's quite fun to do is with you will need a balloon and you will also need a permanent marker now i may well have used this strategy and talked to you about this strategy before as part of our anxiety podcast episode but this is also really helpful in this particular situation so let me just talk you through how you might apply it to a situation where you're having conversations with children about scary world events and you're trying to help them gain perspective so the notion is that when we get concerned about something or worried it's like a balloon we give it air and the more we think about it the more air it gets and it's until eventually it would burst so this is the kind of the analogy this is the context that we want to explain to our children and then what we want to do is we want to get a balloon and obviously we want to reassure our child that we're going to be blowing the balloon up but we are not going to make it pop so we blow up the balloon but again as we're blowing it up we're giving them that notion that that context of you know when we're worrying about whatever it is the world event that your child is worrying about we're giving it air it gets bigger and bigger in our mind and our attention goes to it so it's bigger and bigger and the idea is you want to blow up the balloon to a reasonable size you do not want to blow it up so that it has any danger of popping but you don't want to blow it up just a small amount it needs to have a reasonable amount of air in it and obviously that will vary on the type of balloon that you have so some balloons can only go up can only get a certain size and others don't so you get it to a certain size and then what you will do is you will give a permanent marker to your child and you will ask them to draw and to either draw or to write some of the concerns that they have or the feelings or to sketch squiggles when they think about this world event this scary thing that they are preoccupied with what are some of the things that come into their mind about that so we want them to first of all draw either some words or some imagery or it even might be an emoji it might be some squiggly lines whatever it is what are the feelings that this particular event evokes in them and then we want them to draw then what we want them to do is to consider some of the things that make them happy some of the things that they enjoy some of the things that make them laugh smile or make them happy or content things that they enjoy doing so the idea is we're getting some of the big things that they're worried about on this balloon but we're also getting some of the things which they enjoy which they love which brings them happiness and contentment what you then do is you say to your child but what might happen if we let go if we take the air out of all of these scary things that we've been worried about and then you let go and you say to your child well what might happen it whizzes around and it makes some farty sounds and it's quite hilarious and it's brilliant and your child might even giggle and what you then want to do is you want to pick up the balloon and show it to your child and the key thing is that what basically happens is when we take the air out of a situation which feels really scary we get some perspective because what was drawn and written on a balloon that was huge then becomes absolutely tiny by perspective so what the balloon will do is give our children two sets of perspective it will give them perspective on what they drew that was big and scary has suddenly become tiny and trust me it looks incredible even handwriting or little drawings look amazing but what they'll also see is in the context of the whole balloon the worries that they had are still smaller compared to all of the happy things that they are also experiencing in in their day-to-day as well now just a bit of a health warning with this one because obviously this only works with a marker do not try and use another pen it doesn't work i have tried permanent markers are the only ones that work what will happen obviously is when you've been drawing when it's been a big balloon and then it becomes smaller as the ink just sort of sits on the surface so you'll end up with very sticky or not sticky but very messy ink hands and fingers but it is so worth it in terms of the perspective that it gives the child so you might want to sort of handle the balloon from the end but what's important we also need to remember for our children is that we're not trying to diminish their experience we're not trying to take away how it makes them feel but what we are trying to get them to see is that when we take the air out of it it's not that the worries or the scariness goes away of course it doesn't go away it's still there but we're able to place it within the context of wider things that are going on in our lives and we're able to create a better perspective with it that is one way to create perspective the other way to create perspective is around a daily practice of gratitude now i've talked about this before in previous podcast episodes my personal view is that children over the age of 11 are better able to understand the concept of what gratitude is it's the small things that happen in our lives which make things worthwhile which bring that smile to our face it's the teacher that gives us a smile as we walk into a classroom and congratulates us on a piece of good work it's the sunshine or at least the absence of a smile that gives us a smile that gives us a smile it's the absence of rain when we have a games lesson it's someone holding the door when we've got a whole lot of bags that we're trying to carry it's our favorite lunch or pudding just when we're feeling a little bit low it's the small things that make a big impact it's somebody telling us that we're a great person or that we look lovely or that we're a great friend that's gratitude so children over the age of 11 generally get the concept of gratitude children under the age of 11 usually find it a little bit more difficult so i tend to use a different language of that one and i talk about writing down things which made them happy smart or laugh but in essence a daily practice of gratitude in whichever context language you use is a really powerful way of helping children gain perspective but it has to be written down verbalizing gratitude helps but it doesn't significantly change things it's the process of writing down and i'm a big one for using notebooks so use a notebook to encourage your children to write this down we have a dr mary hand notebook of gratitude which you can also buy on amazon it's just a very very simple notebook so you can simply if you if you're interested in buying one then you just simply go into amazon and just google doctor and just enter dr mary hand in the search and you'll see all the notepads that we have but any notepad will do but it is the process of writing things down and i'm a big fan of this being done at the closing end of the day so it's the some it's the last thing our children do before they go to bed is this sort of practice of gratitude this reframing of their day is focusing in on that aspect of the day as they draw it to a close so my five don'ts just to recap are my five do's sorry to recap are fact check yeah focus on what we know for sure stay away from the sticky ground that we don't know and where our children come up with something that is scary but plausible acknowledge their feelings ask them where they got the information from and agree to do some probing from reliable sources together the second is be honest with your children but also be honest with yourself about how it is affecting you and if you are finding it difficult if your child is picking up on your concerns and your anxieties your over zealousness with the news then focus on what you know and what you don't know and what you don't know and what you don't know you need to do to reset that the third thing is acknowledge their fears meet them where they're at don't dismiss them the fourth is about talk about their toolkit help them find techniques and strategies to place in their toolkit to help them manage that their fear whether that's a breathing technique whether that's a physical activity whether that's coloring whatever it might be help them build their own toolkit so they've got a number of strategies to draw on whenever the fear hits them, whether they're with you. or whether they're preoccupied at school or with friends and the fifth one is help them create some perspective whether that's using my balloon strategy a gratitude strategy or a combination of the two it's helping them see that this is one aspect that they are cognitively primed for that they're being slightly slightly hyper vigilant meerkat looking for more evidence to be fearful but that we want to place that within a wider context so my give this week is my usual checklist with the these five key things that we should be doing but we're going to give you some space to reflect underneath as we've done on previous episodes so it will serve not only as a reminder but also a tool to practically use so as usual head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download the resource all you need to do is pop in your email and you'll be able to find the link to download the resource the business on Shopify. 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Podcast Summary

Key Points:

The podcast addresses how parents can talk to children about frightening world events like war, climate change, and unrest.
Children in the digital era can easily find information themselves, so parents must proactively provide evidence-based answers.
Parents should avoid ignoring the situation, assuming children are not worried, or dismissing their concerns.
The first strategy is to fact-check by focusing on what is known for sure and avoiding speculation.
The second strategy is to be honest with children and with oneself about feelings and anxieties.
The third strategy is to acknowledge children's fears by meeting them where they are emotionally.
The fourth strategy is to help children build a toolkit of practical techniques like breathing exercises.
The fifth strategy is to help children gain perspective through balloon exercises and daily gratitude practice.

Summary:

She identifies three things parents should be mindful of: ignoring the situation, assuming a child is not worried simply because they have not mentioned it, and forgetting that children pick up on the concerns of parents, teachers, and peers. Parents must also check in with themselves about their own anxieties. Hand then offers five key strategies: fact-check by focusing on what is known for sure and avoiding speculation; be honest with children and with oneself about feelings; acknowledge children's fears by meeting them where they are; help children build a toolkit of techniques such as breathing exercises and physical activities; and help children create perspective through a balloon drawing exercise and a daily written gratitude practice.

She emphasizes that dismissing fears will cause children to close off and seek information elsewhere.

FAQs

Why is it important to talk to children about scary world events?›

In the digital era, children can easily search for answers themselves and may find unreliable information. Having conversations ensures they receive evidence-based truths and feel supported.

What should parents avoid doing when discussing scary events?›

Avoid ignoring the situation, assuming your child isn't worried if they haven't mentioned it, and dismissing their concerns while trying to reassure them.

What does it mean to 'fact check' with children?›

Focus on what you know for sure and avoid speculation. Use language like 'what we know for sure is...' and steer clear of uncertain outcomes.

Why is honesty important when talking about scary events?›

Being honest about what you don't know and about your own feelings builds trust. Children will sense your anxiety, so honesty helps them feel safe and understood.

How can parents acknowledge their child's fears?›

Meet them where they are emotionally. Validate their feelings by saying things like 'I can see this feels really scary to you' so they feel heard and are more likely to come back to you.

What techniques can help children manage fear and anxiety?›

Teach practical strategies like breathing exercises (e.g., take 10, 7-11, square breathing), physical activities, coloring, or playing games. Practice these techniques together.

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