Bearing The Bad With Care And Love, Children Learn That Disasters And Tragedies Are A Real Part Of Life

Like a drumbeat of tropical summer rain, horrible things just seem to keep happening. Hurricane Andrew. Bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center. The ValuJet crash. The TWA Flight 800 tragedy. The pipe bomb at the Olympics.

After each disaster, psychologists are always advising: Talk to your kids. Reassure them that, while bad things sometimes happen, they are safe.

But how many disasters will it take before kids stop believing that?

“There does seem to be a cumulative effect, a piggy-backing effect, when so many things happen,” says James Garbarino, a psychologist and director of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “Kids who have experienced one traumatic event don’t become inoculated against them in the future. In fact, it tends to make them more vulnerable.” Russell Jones, a psychologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute who studied South Florida kids’ reactions to 1992’s Hurricane Andrew and other traumas, agrees.

“There could be a buildup of lack of trust, particularly if a child is not given the chance to talk about it,” says Jones.

Of course, the world has never been a perfectly safe haven. Growing up in the 1950s, Garbarino says, he and his peers were terrified by elementary school air-raid drills that were a routine reminder of the Cold War.

“But that was the only thing that was worse then than now,” says Garbarino, who studied the effects on kids of our increasingly troubled world in writing “Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment” (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1995, $24.95). “And imagine if that were going on today. We’d all be seeing it live on television. Today’s children are part of the CNN generation.

“The cumulative effect of Hurricane Andrew, the TWA bombing, the Olympics, kidnappings, can decrease children’s basic trust in the world, increase their skepticism, even paranoia. Socially poisonous experiences kids have can affect kids’ philosophy of life, how they deal with things.”

Naturally, personal traumas affect kids more than disasters half a country away, psychologists say. But don’t presume in this day of instantaneous, live TV coverage of disasters that far-away events don’t affect children.

A study by psychologist Robert Pynoos of 113 elementary children in a Los Angeles school where a sniper attack took place showed that kids who saw the attack tended to minimize their personal risk, while those who didn’t see it tended to exaggerate it.

So what can we do?

There are no new answers, psychologists say. Just keep on working on the old ones. Like: Today, more than ever, we must talk to our kids - and listen to them.

“Data show that kids who have had the opportunity to express their feelings will deal with things better the next time,” says Jones.

And while parents should keep the youngest children away from constant exposure to TV disaster news, psychologists say they shouldn’t try to keep older kids in the dark.

“It’s OK that they see the news,” says Jones. “But the parent has to be with them to put it in context. They can lessen the anxiety and fear. Research in war zones shows it, too. It’s not what kids experience, but how it’s presented to them. If adults are fearful and anxious, kids think, ‘This is so bad even my parents can’t handle it.’ “

Watching TV coverage of disasters can even help children cope, some studies suggest.

Studying the reactions of 122 Midwestern kids 9 to 12 years old who saw the space shuttle Challenger explode on TV on Jan. 28, 1986, a team of University of Kansas psychologists concluded: “When the public collectively focuses its emotions on the television set, viewers’ knowledge that virtually everyone else is also watching may help them cope with their feelings and encourage them to share their distress with others.”

The kids who coped best, that study found, were those who kept right on watching TV coverage of the disaster, learning as much as they could about it, in effect helping themselves put it in context as something not likely to happen to them.

Garbarino offers three concrete ways to help kids through repeated traumas:

Don’t become so preoccupied with the events that you become less accessible to the child, who needs to talk with you.

Don’t presume you know how your children feel. Let them render the event to you in their own terms.

When horrible things happen in a far-away environment, focus on reassuring activities in the kids’ immediate environment. “If your kids watched the TWA thing, and you’re about to go on a business trip, or Grandma is flying, or the kids are going on a trip, be particularly ready to reassure them that thousands of flights take place safely every day. Take them to the airport, and show them planes coming and going normally.”

Says Jones: “Children understand that society is becoming increasingly dangerous, that natural disasters and man-made ones seem to be on the increase.

“Parents have to be honest with kids. Tell them the world is less safe. Let them know that this is the state of the world, that these things do happen.

“But also let them know that most people get through them.”