Experts give advice on how to help children deal with war
If you wouldn’t feed children a diet of potato chips and pop, don’t feed them a diet of constant war news either. That’s the advice of Jacquie Albert, a licensed social worker and clinical coordinator for the Fayette County Critical Incident Team. She said in many cases the solution to helping children cope with war is simply to turn off the television – or turn on something else.
“In a lot of ways, it’s like some of the things we were telling people after 9-11: Limit kids’ exposure,” said Albert, also a therapist in private practice.
“Kids don’t have the ability to process the stuff they see on TV. They may hear a phrase or a word or something a commentator says that they find frightening,” she continued. “Sometimes parents don’t realize kids are like little sponges and they soak this all in.”
Even though they may not seem to be paying rapt attention to war coverage, Albert said they are paying attending to adults around them. Those reactions are catalogued and stored and children take a cue from what they see.
Even adults, said Albert, could do well to limit how much they are exposed to war coverage now shown on television.
Iris Harlan, manager of the Child Development Unit at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh said that parents of younger children also need to maintain routines and reassure children that their needs will be met despite the overseas conflict.
“Younger children need to know the family is safe, while teens may need to have a more in-depth conversation about the war,” said Harlan.
Both Albert and Harlan also said that parents need to pay attention to what children are doing to recognize any changes in routine that may serve as an alert that something is wrong.
In younger children, Albert suggested monitoring what your child is drawing or how he or she is playing to make certain that fears and concerns are not manifesting themselves that way.
“Sometimes children that aren’t able to talk intellectually about what they’re feeling will show things through drawing or in play,” said Albert. “Kids will try to gain a sense of mastery over things they don’t have control over with things they do have control over.”
Children may, for example, play roughly with certain toys or crash toy cars into one another.
Albert also suggested that, in addition to limiting television, children not be exposed to adult discussions about the war.
“Let them watch their cartoons. That’s giving kids good mental nutrition,” she said.
If adults are feeling overwhelmed dealing with the war or helping their children cope, Chestnut Ridge Counseling Services Inc. has a 24-hour mental health crisis line that can be contacted at 724-437-1003.
Additional parenting tips to help children understand war time and other tragic events can be found at Children’s Hospital website at www.chp.edu
under the “For Parents” and “Parenting Tips” section of the site.