Moms Council: Talking With Your Kids About Japan

“Mama, is there going to be an earthquake here?” My four year old asks and I realize that the news of Japan has been on too long. Or has it?

I explain that earthquakes and tsunamis don’t usually happen in Minnesota.

“We are safe. We’re ok.” I tell him wanting to push the fears out of him.

“But those people aren’t?” He asks. “They said on TV people are dead.”

It’s been a week since the tragedies in Japan began. The earthquake, then the tsunami, now the radiation and the possible reactor meltdown.

And we are literally a world away.

It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day dramas of running out of milk and having a 2-year-old that just will not nap, but then you hear a news blip on the radio or see on TV these people with no way to get out of town. They have masks covering their faces and the possibility of death literally over them, and you realize you’ve got nothing, and I mean nothing, to complain about.

I’m the first to admit my husband and I barely ever watch the news. But when crisis strikes, we are glued. The stories and the pictures suck us in and our hearts hurt.

Inherently, our kids see the pictures and hear the stories and we talk about it.

 “We are safe. We’re ok.” I tell my son again. “But some people aren’t and we don’t know why it happened and there’s not a whole lot we can do to help them right now besides watching and waiting with the Japanese.”

So we pray and we donate and we read and we watch and we listen and sometimes we still feel helpless to such a disaster.

I’m sure there’s a right way and a wrong way to expose your kids to tragedy and how to talk about it and I’m sure we’re doing it all haphazardly and unplanned, but for some reason, our kids are getting it despite us.

So as we leave the house, I know he gets it when he says (to the TV), “We’re thinking of you, Japan!”

We sure are.