Children learn about the world through a variety of sources, including parents, teachers, friends, and the media. Although news gleaned from television, radio, or the Internet can be a positive educational experience for kids, problems can arise when the images presented are violent or news stories touch on disturbing topics. Reports on subjects such as natural disasters, child abductions, homicides, terrorist activities, school violence, or a politician's sex life can teach kids to view the world as a confusing, threatening, or unfriendly place.
How can you deal with these disturbing stories and images? Talking to your child about what he or she watches or hears will help your child put frightening information into a more balanced and reasonable context.
How Kids Perceive the News
Unlike movies or entertainment programs, news is real. But depending on your child's age or maturity level, he or she may not yet understand the distinctions between fact and fantasy. By the time a child reaches 7 or 8, however, what he or she watches on TV can seem all too real. For some youngsters, the vividness of a sensational news story can be internalized and transformed into something that might happen to them. A child watching a news story about a kidnapping or bombing might worry, "Could I be next? Could that happen to me?"
Natural disasters or stories of other types of devastation can be personalized in the same manner. A child in Massachusetts who sees a house tumbling off a cliff during a California mudslide may spend a sleepless night worrying about the stability of the ground beneath his own apartment building. A child in Ohio, seeing news about a tragedy in New York, might fear for her own family. TV has an effect of shrinking the world and bringing it into your own living room.
By concentrating on violent stories, television news can also promote a "mean-world" syndrome, which can give children a misrepresentation of what the world and society is actually like.
Talking About the News
To calm children's fears about the news, parents should be prepared to deliver what psychologists call "calm, unequivocal, but limited information." This means delivering the truth, but only as much truth as the child needs to know. The key is to be as truthful, yet as inexplicit as you can be. There's no need to go into more details than your child is interested in.
Although it's true that some things - like a natural disaster - can't be controlled, parents should still give children space to share their fears. Encourage your child to talk openly about what scares him or her.
Older children are less likely to accept an explanation at face value. Their budding skepticism about the news and how it's produced and sold might mask anxieties they have about the stories it covers. If an older child is bothered about a story, help him or her cope with these fears. An adult's willingness to listen will send a powerful message.
Teens can also be encouraged to consider why a frightening or disturbing story was on the air: Was it to increase the program's ratings because of its sensational value or because it was truly newsworthy? In this way, a scary story can be turned into a worthwhile discussion about the role and mission of the news.
