Preparing children for hurricanes

It is important that parents do not minimize the significance to the child of assuring that each pet's safety is guaranteed. Doing so may question the youngster's certainty that the parent is dedicated absolutely to his or her own safety. While the importance of pets should not be minimized, the process can be fostered even in situations where children, because of a variety of factors, including allergies, may not be able to have a pet. In this case, parents must recognize the importance of other transitional objects such as a stuffed animal, favorite security blanket, or meaningful souvenir or gift.

Children can be helped to understand their own feelings when parents let them know that they have felt similarly when they were young. These feelings should be kept in perspective, however. To acknowledge too much fear only would serve to tarnish the image in the child's eyes of the strong parent. Children respect adults who can acknowledge their feelings and allow them to be expressed. They do not respect or learn from adults who act like children, for this induces fear, not comfort.

Concern for absent family members

Deliberations about family safety should include a discussion of the security of absent members and whether or not they should be included in the emergency plan of the primary family. Single-parent households especially need to assure the well-being of loved members not living in the primary unit. Parents can express apprehensions for their own siblings or parents whose safety also may be endangered. Preparations may include having a grandparent in the emergency plan. This demonstrates to children the important loving interactions between their own mothers and fathers and the latter's parents.

During pre-planning and the hours when actual emergency procedures are in effect, attention should be paid to the various community facilities and civil and governmental agencies that increase the over-all safety of the family. Children can be helped to comprehend in a firsthand fashion how modern life requires a great amount of interdependency among people. If applicable, families may consider their good fortune and how they may assist neighbors who might need aid.

Family talks are an opportune time for parents to reminisce about how they coped with potential natural disasters when they were children. Tying events of one generation to another provides youngsters with a sense of intergenerational continuity and immortality. This may be a time to discuss Mother Nature in general, remembering that all of us have unconscious concerns regarding our own trust in her. Most of us go to bed at night confident that the sun will rise the next morning. Most children go to bed not quite as confident that mommy or daddy will be present in the morning. Youngsters should be allowed opportunities to express such anxieties.

Parents who foster discussion and encourage a communal experience of other non-threatening natural phenomena help to desensitize children to the threats of Mother Nature and aid their experience of her as the relatively consistent phenomenon she really is. Thanks to the wonders of science, families can take the opportunity to partake in predictable and non-threatening natural events such as eclipses or phenomena such as Halley's Comet. This enables kids to see the predictability of Mother Nature and that, over all, parents (and Mother Nature, too) can be counted on. Since some of these phenomena occur rarely--perhaps only a few times in a lifetime--it is an opportunity to talk about the immortality of nature, ideas, and feelings.