The world seems to have had more than it’s fair share of disasters over the last couple of years, the floods in India, situation in Haiti, the earthquake in Christchurch and then overnight the massive earthquake in Japan. It seems to be a pretty scary time to live at the moment.
I am all too aware of how tragedy can affect children, we have experienced enough in our family and my boys have been exposed to illness and death from an early age, but this does not mean that I no longer feel the need to shield them from the hardest realities of the news.
I find the news footage shocking and I am keen to limit the boys exposure to the footage, but also to explain what is happening and how it is effecting people around the world. For me this means ensuring that we do not watch the news at 6pm and watching a program like news round which is made with children in mind.
Ellen did a post over at Ready for Ten last year, on helping your children understand the news and it has some great tips.
One of the things we have done this morning, is to look at where Japan is on the boys map and their globe and discussed what an earthquake is. I have also tried to reassure them that we only have tiny earthquakes in the UK.
The boys are going to be giving away something each week for charity as part of our Lent, so we are going to discuss ways we can help people over dinner tonight.
How do you help your children deal with events like these?
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