Talking to children about emergencies: they already know something is going on
The instinct to avoid talking to children about emergencies is a good instinct pointed in the wrong direction. Children notice. They hear the weather radio, they see the go-bag by the door, they catch the half of a phone call where an adult’s voice changes. What they do not have is the context to make sense of it, so they fill the gap themselves, and what they invent is almost always worse than the truth.
The American Red Cross puts it plainly: talking about emergencies ahead of time reduces fear, particularly for younger children. Preparedness conversations are not what frighten kids. Being left to guess is.
Start with what they can do
The single most useful move is to give a child a job.
The American Red Cross recommends bringing the whole family into preparation, because children feel reassured knowing a plan is in place. A specific job is the most concrete version of that. Match the job to the age, and make it real rather than decorative. Ready.gov’s Ready Kids pages have games and printable plan sheets built for the younger end of that list, which makes the jobs easier to hand over:
- A young child can be in charge of choosing which stuffed animal and which book go in the family bag, and can learn the family meeting spot as a game.
- An elementary-age child can pack and be responsible for their own small bag, learn to spell their full name and address, memorize one adult’s phone number, and know how to call 911 and what to say.
- A middle schooler can learn how to shut off the water, help track the supply list, and be the one who reminds everybody to charge devices when a storm is coming.
- A teenager can be a genuine second adult in the plan: knows the evacuation routes and can drive them, can be responsible for a younger sibling or a pet, and knows the out-of-area contact by heart.
Write their job on the family plan next to their name. Kids take a written responsibility more seriously than a spoken one, which is not so different from adults.
Answer the question they actually asked
When a child asks “are we going to be okay,” they are usually not asking for a statistical assessment. They are asking whether the adults have a plan and whether the adults are alright.
Answer the real question, and answer it honestly. “We have a plan, I know what we would do, and my job is to take care of you” is both true and reassuring. Promising that nothing bad will ever happen is neither, and in a town where a lot of children have already watched something bad happen, it does not land.
The Red Cross makes another point worth holding onto: a child who feels afraid is afraid. Correcting the feeling does not work. Acknowledging it and then moving to what you will do about it does.
Children also take their reading of the situation from adult behavior more than adult words. Staying calm and matter-of-fact gives them information they use.
Practice instead of lecturing
One drill teaches more than five conversations, and it works better because it is something to do rather than something to sit through.
Practice the meeting spot, both the one near the house and the one out of the neighborhood. Practice getting out of the house from more than one room. Have your child actually dial the out-of-town contact and say their name and where they are. Do a fifteen minute run-through where everybody grabs their bag and gets to the vehicle, and time it, because kids enjoy a stopwatch and it exposes exactly which parts of your plan are unrealistic.
Keep it light. A stopwatch and a race to the car is a better teacher than a serious talk about the same thing.
Limit the loop
During and after an emergency, keep young children away from repeating news coverage and repeating video. The Red Cross specifically advises this. A young child watching the same footage several times often understands it as the event happening several times.
For older kids, the equivalent problem is the phone. It may be worth agreeing in advance on a check-the-news schedule rather than a constant feed.
Afterward is part of the plan
Reactions after an emergency are normal and they vary by age. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s parent tip sheets describe the range. Younger children may regress in ways they had outgrown: clinging, bedwetting, trouble sleeping alone. School-age children may complain of stomachaches or headaches, have trouble concentrating, or ask the same questions repeatedly. Teenagers may pull away, or take on more than their share, or show it as irritability rather than sadness.
The general approach that works across ages: keep routines where you can, give simple honest information, allow the questions to repeat without impatience, and bring the child into some part of the recovery so they are doing something rather than watching. If something does not ease over a period of weeks, or if it is interfering with school, sleep, or eating, that is worth a conversation with a pediatrician or counselor.
Here is a step beyond the basics
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network publishes free parent tip sheets from the Psychological First Aid field guide, and they are broken out by age band: infants and toddlers, preschool-age children, school-age children, and adolescents. Past the reactions listed above, each one gives specific examples of what a parent can actually say, which is the part most general advice leaves out.
Download the one that matches your child now, before you need it, and put it with your family emergency plan. Reading it in advance is easy. Finding it and reading it during a hard week is not. The same organization offers a free Help Kids Cope app organized by disaster type.
If your household needs someone to talk to after an emergency, the Disaster Distress Helpline from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is free, confidential, and available year round at 1-800-985-5990.
Read your school’s emergency plan
Find out how your child’s school handles early dismissal, sheltering in place, and reunification, and make sure the school has current contact information for you and for the other adult authorized to pick your child up. A good share of any family’s plan depends on the school’s plan, and it is easy to have never read it.
Sit down with your kids this week and give each of them a job. Fifteen minutes, and it changes what an emergency feels like to a child from something that happens to them into something they have a part in.
Give each of them a job this week
The next post in this series pulls the preparedness basics together into one checklist you can work through at your own pace.
Resources mentioned in this post
- How families can prepare for emergencies, and talking with children, American Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/teaching-kids-about-emergency-preparedness/how-families-can-prepare-for-emergencies.html
- Ready Kids, Ready.gov: https://www.ready.gov/kids
- Parent tips for helping infants and toddlers after disasters, National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org/resources/pfa-parent-tips-helping-infants-and-toddlers-after-disasters
- Parent tips for helping preschool-age children after disasters, National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org/resources/pfa-parent-tips-helping-preschool-age-children-after-disasters
- Parent tips for helping school-age children after disasters, National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org/resources/pfa-parent-tips-helping-school-age-children-after-disasters
- Parent tips for helping adolescents after disasters, National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org/resources/pfa-parent-tips-helping-adolescents
- Help Kids Cope app, National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org/resources/help-kids-cope
- Disaster Distress Helpline, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/helplines/disaster-distress-helpline