In the face of earthquakes or other catastrophes, children can create countless stories to explain what happened and everything they see; it happens that his brain is not yet able to distinguish fantasy from reality; See how to talk about the earthquakes.
HOW TO TALK ABOUT EARTHQUAKES AND OTHER CATASTROPHES TO YOUR CHILD?
At five years of age, children still understand much of what is happening around them through their magical thinking, the one that mixes their fantasy with reality, giving life to explanations that launch all their creativity.
Therefore, it is necessary to give them an explanation so that they can understand the world they inhabit and stimulate the adequate maturation of their thinking; as well as help them work on the emotions they may have as a result of the event. We tell you how to tell them about earthquakes and other catastrophes that they could experience or see through the media:
1. Find out how much you know about it. The first thing is to see what he knows about the subject, because you could give him unnecessary information or that could confuse him because he will not understand it. Ask him what he lived through, what he thinks of what happened, what his teachers, cousins or friends have told him; you need to listen carefully before saying anything.
2. Be specific in the explanation. It is not convenient to delve into details or try to give a scientific explanation; you can complicate this talk by wanting to make him see reality as is so that he is a conscious person when the truth is that he is a child and his brain is not ready to understand some things, he just needs to know what happened precisely: “sometimes the earth It moves and is not under our control, nor can we know when it will do so again. ”
3. Find out what you feel and think . For some young children it can be a lot of fun to feel that the earth is moving, it is a game they would like to repeat; For others, it is a traumatic event due to the disasters they saw in their immediate surroundings and the stress they felt. It is important to know what your child thinks and feels; the two are united: if a child thought “how funny”, his emotion will be happiness. If you thought “I am going to drop school,” you will surely be afraid. Listen to him, never say “nothing happened here”, better let him speak, let me tell you how the event lived; Let him express his emotions so that he feels accompanied.
4. Validate your emotions. It is about making him see that just as he feels fear, you too, because it will help him not to feel alone, but understood. Feel free to express your emotions in front of him, but showing him that regardless of what happened, they go forward. The message should be “I do not deny that I was scared, however, I can not hide or no longer do my activities.” As you react, he will.
5. Tell him the truth. Be honest, if you tell him “it will never happen again”, when he trembles again, or the streets are flooded, you will lose credibility with him. Talk to him from the real, that he knows that these disasters happen in the world and that they will surely happen again because nobody has control over them. Even young children who are very afraid need the truth.
6. Make him feel safe . You can do this by helping him see that prevention is his best defense. An example: “it’s like when it rains, do you know when it is going to rain? It is something that we cannot control, but when we take out the umbrella, we are safe, that is why we carry it in our purse; At school they have explained what to do in the tremors so that you and your classmates are safe, in the drills, remember? Show me what you have been taught! ”
7. No photos or images. If we adults are often affected by seeing the aftermath of the disaster, for children they are incomprehensible because they do not have the capacity for abstraction to know that this has already happened; They are left with the idea that what they are seeing is happening at the moment, so they could be stimulating continuous stress on it.
8. Be very loving to him . He needs you to be close to him, attentive and available to express himself and listen to him; many children reconstruct the story in their games or through drawings, that is very good because that way they assimilate what happened