In light of the devastating attacks in France, I have found a post from A Mighty Girl on Facebook that gives us a different perspective from the news and media.
Please read this and remember, there might be evil in this world that we could highlight and acknowledge, or we could give light to those who help others in the time of conflict – the Angels risking their lives whilst we watch on from the safety of our homes.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of France in the wake of several devastating attacks in Paris.
As with many tragedies that are covered extensively in the media, children who hear about them may be confused or scared. Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood once shared a thoughtful approach for comforting children and instilling a sense of hope in them in the face of such incomprehensible events:
“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.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” — Fred Rogers
Hand in Hand Parenting also provides many great tips for parents on how to talk to kids about shocking events — be they natural disasters or senseless violence — in their article at http://www.handinhandparenting.org/article/helping-children-exposed-to-shocking-events
You can find more resources, including tips for parents related to media coverage, on the website of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network at http://www.nctsn.org/trauma-types/terrorism.
Thank you for reading.
Thanks so much for sharing this. It’s so true that as much as evil comes to the fore in these events, so goes the good…the helpers. We had a terrible hail storm yesterday and multiple hailstones smashing through our the laserlite on our office where my computer and books etc live. My husband was at work and I have a disability and my son was fraking out and taking about getting up on the roof to fix it…so not helpful. We called the State Emergency Service and a truck load of volunteers came and patched us up ie saved the day. They really took the sting out of the tail of the storm. The day before, by the way we have 4 Black Hawk hericopters doing laps of our suburb which also freaked us out. That turned out to be a training exercise but it was terrifying and the sounds was incredible. It was so loud. All of this, is nothing compared to Paris and yet it was big in our world. This is great advice. Many thanks xx Rowena
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Gosh that must have been scary Rowena. I’m glad you and your family are okay. It’s true – an act of kindness from the community can change everything. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. By the way, I find it frightening when we hear the army training a few miles from our house! I would hate for the helicopters to do flyovers too! ☺️
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Thank you very much Eloise. I’ve written a few posts about Paris which you might find interesting, especially as they’re from a similar community perspective.
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I will check them out, thank you. 😀
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