When The News Is Scary, What To Say To Kids

Life Kit: Parenting

NPR

Kids & Family

4.6 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Whether a school shooting or a deadly tornado, scary events in the news can leave parents struggling to know when — and how — they should talk with their kids about it. Rosemarie Truglio of Sesame Workshop and Tara Conley, a media studies professor at Montclair State University, give us tips.

- Limit their exposure to breaking news.
- For the really big stories, pick a quiet moment and start the conversation by asking what kids have heard and how they're feeling.
- Give facts and context: Let kids know that most scary news events are rare. Show them where it is happening on a map.
- When they ask why something happened, avoid labels like "bad guys."
- Encourage kids to process the story through play, art, even video.
- Take positive action together.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:18.0	First, it was the radio.
0:20.9	Then, television. And now was the radio. Then, television.
0:23.0	And now, the internet.
0:26.5	Bringing news of the outside world into our homes.
0:30.0	Wait, Corey, what is this?
0:31.7	That was pretty good, right?
0:32.3	Is this?
0:32.9	I thought this was Life Kit.
0:34.3	That was my announcer voice.
0:35.4	I'm doing an old news reel.
0:36.9	Oh, okay.
0:37.7	Great.
0:38.1	Well, we're talking about news in our homes, right?
0:40.3	Oh, yes, yes, yes.
0:41.2	Okay, so we are.
0:42.0	So, yes, we are all taking in news all the time, this crazy 24-hour news cycle.
0:47.4	But what we don't always realize is that our children are often listening right alongside us.
0:52.9	And sometimes that's not so great.
0:55.3	I was really little during the Vietnam War.
	...

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