What To Tell Kids When The News Is Scary

Life Kit: Parenting

NPR

Kids & Family

4.6 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the headlines are terrifying, how can parents make sure kids get the facts without traumatizing them? Whether it's a school shooting, a global pandemic or an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, child development experts have some advice. (This episode originally ran in March 2019.)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We're all watching and processing what's happening in D.C.
0:03.8	For the latest news, tune into your local NPR station or go to npr.org.
0:09.3	For now, we thought this Life Kit episode would be useful.
0:12.5	Stay safe.
0:16.4	First, it was the radio.
0:19.4	Then television.
0:23.7	And now, the radio. Then, television, and now the internet.
0:28.2	Bringing news of the outside world into our homes.
0:30.1	Wait, Corey, what is this?
0:30.8	That was pretty good, right? Is this?
0:31.4	I thought this was Life Kit.
0:32.7	That was my announcer voice.
0:33.8	I'm doing an old news reel.
0:35.3	Oh, okay, great.
0:36.6	Well, we're talking about news in our homes, right?
0:38.8	Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so we are. So, yes, we are all taking in news all the time, this crazy 24-hour news cycle.
0:45.8	But what we don't always realize is that our children are often listening right alongside us. And sometimes that's not so great.
0:53.7	I was really little during the Vietnam War.
0:56.7	Alison Alquan grew up in rural Louisiana.
0:59.7	My dad was in favor of the war and watching the news in the evening after work.
1:05.4	To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence,
1:13.1	the optimists who have been wrong in the past.
	...

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