To keep kids safe, make them feel safe
Saturday evening in Durham. My in-laws and I had just begun our usual postprandial shout about Donald Trump when my niece appeared at the door, pale. “There’s another terror attack in London,” she said. “I’m scared.”
The veins of the men in my husband’s family run with a sort of event-activated coolant. No one asked what had happened or how many were dead. My father-in-law said: “Don’t be daft. What’s there to be scared of?” His brother added: “You’re more likely to be killed by cows.” This, though not strictly true, is less ludicrous than you might imagine. Some 90 Brits were killed by terrorist attacks in the 15 years from 2000, whereas 74 were killed by cows.
The cows did the trick. My niece’s anxiety evaporated and she remembered what her headmistress had said after the Manchester bomb: more people were killed by terrorists in the 1970s with much less fuss, so don’t fret.
What an excellent head. Every teacher should follow her example, and every parent too. Children don’t need a painful explanation of Islamism. Children need to feel safe. So switch off the TV, shrug, say: “It’s awful, but worse things have happened.
Perhaps because humans are born so puny, our offspring are particularly prone to terror. Children pick their personal bugbears from the world around them: dark cupboards, rats. Now imagine a child who has become frightened of knife-wielding jihadis. What can you say? That they’re not real? If, in the mid-1980s, the portentous anchormen of the BBC had been reporting on vampire attacks, I’d have had to be sedated. It’s impossible to avoid the news, but what we can do is show our children how to react to it.
Kids of all ages are hypersensitive to parents’ reactions. Even before they’re born, babies take their cue from their mothers. So treat the news with disdain; not just to show those Islamists some British pluck but because the greatest damage they can do is to make this already anxious generation even more on edge.
Perhaps I should have more faith in the good sense of British parents — but recent signs have not boded well. One friend’s child was told by his teacher after Mr Trump was elected that evil now ruled the world. This normally plucky seven-year-old was in bits. The baddies have won? What did it mean? Another friend has a six-year-old son who was told at school that a vote for Brexit would mean England would be lonely with no friends.
It’s the same story with global warming, often explained to even young children as an imminent event. ‘Think of your children, as I think of mine,” said Prince Charles at a UN conference in November, restating his conviction that there were only 20 months left to save the world from global warming. If he really had been thinking of the children he wouldn’t have talked such tripe. Children take things literally. They believe what adults say. Any child who heard the next king would be waiting for the world to end.
If you take your child on marches for peace, if you paint their face with #LoveLondon to signal brave solidarity on Instagram, you’re conjuring a world for them in which it’s just Chris Martin and Ariana Grande standing between them and Islamist assassins. The 21st century must be a very peculiar to be a child. We protect our kids from harm — smothering playgrounds in rubber and rushing like demented ape-mothers to savage any playfellow who dares to give our darling a pinch. We wade in to champion our kids at school, defend them against their own peers and teachers too. In 1971, 80 per cent of eight-to-nine-year-olds walked to school alone. Now it’s five per cent. We tell ourselves the dangers are greater these days, but the evidence suggests the risk remains the same. Carefully we create these little spun-glass creatures. Then we tell ’em that the world is ending or that England is under siege. No wonder they need counselling.
So keep calm, carry on; remind the worried young that other people in other times and places have faced far, far worse. My niece, having overcome her panic, is more interested in what happened in the 1970s. To put the threat we face now into perspective is to shift a child’s focus from self to other, and there’s no better cure for fear than that.