“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”  Fred Rogers*

There has been talk in the news this morning of possible terrorist attacks in Sydney, the city where I live.  As parents, how do we respond to this constant barrage of news about shocking and violent events – whether they are terrorism, wars, awful mass shootings, or natural disasters?  How do we help our children live happily and confidently in a world which holds so much horror and insecurity?

It is only with a robust sense of their own cherished place in the world that children will have the resource that it takes to tackle the many challenges facing our planet at the moment.  When these things happen, we need to shield them from details they will not be able to make sense of, put our own “oxygen masks” on first to make sure we are in good shape ourselves, listen to our children and answer their questions with pictures of what humans can do together for good, and offer them the huge resassurance of regular Special Time.

As adults, we can put these events into a bigger context. We know that people can and will band together to pull through. Our children don’t always have such a big picture and it makes it hard for them to make sense of what they are seeing and hearing. Continue reading →