Today, a terrible thing happened in Connecticut. My thoughts and prayers are with the families and the community who are affected by the school shooting. Their loss is being felt around the world. Unfortunately, there seems to be no shortage of terrible things happening lately. Even in a home where there is no television outside of DVDs and PBS, I am always aware of the horrifying things that are going on in the world thanks to Facebook and email.
As an adult, I do not mind being exposed to news, even news of tragedies, because it is important to be at least somewhat aware of what is going on in the world. When I look at news stories online, I am able to control how much I read about any given event, and I usually don’t read all that much. I am a very sensitive person and I could easily read myself into a state of complete despair if I were to follow news stories more closely. Enough about me, though, this post is about the kids.
In contrast to my experience as a child where the television was always on, and the news was our constant companion at breakfast and dinner, my boys are not usually exposed to the news. I can remember situations where I was very young, and I saw terrifying things on the news. Since I was small, I probably did not say anything to my parents about it. I probably just kept my anxiety and upset to myself. Now that I am a parent, I choose to keep the news out of sight in our home for the sake of the boys, and for myself as well.
Part of parenting effectively is managing my own emotions. Since watching news often makes me anxious and also sad, when I read news after the boys are in bed, I can feel my emotions freely as I learn about what happened and I can process those emotions so that I am calm again by morning. I can only hope that keeping the news out of sight, and managing my own feelings about it carefully, will help them to grow into children that are less anxious than I am.
Photo by click on morguefile.com.