Traumatic Experiences
No matter how hard parents try to protect their children from having dreadful experiences, it is the nature of life, that almost all children go through such experiences anyway. Common dreadful experiences that children can experience include accidents and natural disasters, getting lost, serious illness in the family, separation from a loved one, death of a family member, witnessing domestic violence, experiencing bullying or abuse, etc.
Children are resilient
Children are masters in coping. They usually recover well from the awful things they have to go through. They use all kinds of coping mechanisms to deal with their experience. For example, they may talk with a friend or a trusted adult about what happened, they may draw pictures about what they have seen, they may play a game where a doll experiences what they have experienced, or they may want you to read to them, again and again, a children’s story that touches the same theme.
If for any reason you feel that a child needs extra help to cope with whatever he has gone through, you use the guidelines below.
Children are masters of coping. They usually recover well from the awful things they have to go through. They use all kinds of coping mechanisms to deal with their experience.
Guidelines to support a child
– Avoid pushing or pressing a child to talk about his experience. Children talk freely when they are ready.
– Offer a child opportunities to talk spontaneously about his experience by spending time with him.
– If a child does not want to talk about his experience, he may still want to deal with it by drawing pictures of what happened, or listening to stories of how other people have survived similar experiences.
– If a child wants to talk with you about his experience, allow him to speak freely and focus only on listening to his experience.
– If a child presents questions, answer as best you can. If you don’t know the answer, be honest and don’t hesitate to say that you don’t know.
– Show interest and appreciate the ways in which a child coped with the event. Compliment the child for having been brave, wise, or smart. Say things like “That was a clever thing to do. How did you know to do that?”
– Assume the position that children can survive almost anything and the best way for adults to support them is simply to be there for them and to appreciate their own coping strategies.
This article is owned by: Kids’Skills http://www.kidsskillsapp.com/
