When The News Is Scary, What To Say To Kids

Life Kit

NPR

Kids & Family, Self-improvement, Business, Health & Fitness, Education

4.5 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 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	First, it was the radio.
0:05.0	Then, television.
0:07.0	And now, the Internet.
0:11.0	Bringing news of the outside world into our homes.
0:14.0	Wait, Corey, Corey, what is this?
0:16.0	That was pretty good, right?
0:17.0	I thought this was life kit.
0:19.0	That was my announcer voice.
0:20.0	I'm doing an old news reel.
0:21.0	Oh, okay, great.
0:22.0	Well, we're talking about news in our homes, right?
0:25.0	Oh, yes, yes, yes.
0:26.0	Okay, so we are.
0:27.0	Yes, we are all taking a news all the time.
0:30.0	This crazy 24-hour news cycle.
0:32.0	But what we don't always realize is that our children are often listening right alongside us.
0:37.0	And sometimes that's not so great.
0:40.0	I was really little during the Vietnam War.
0:43.0	Allison Alquah grew up in rural Louisiana.
0:46.0	My dad was in favor of the war and watching the news in the evening after work.
0:52.0	I was just saying that we are closer to victory today.
0:55.0	Is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.
	...

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