Helping kids cope with Katrina

Victoria Clayton • E-mail

In the aftermath of a natural disaster such as Katrina, it’s almost too painful to even consider the impact on children. Of course, this is exactly what any parent wonders: How will the children of New Orleans and surrounding areas hit by the hurricane recover and what influence will news of the hurricane’s fury have on the children watching around the country?

For the concerned children watching, the key to handling this and other traumatic news events is for parents to spend time helping them understand, experts say. Of course, kids shouldn’t be glued to the television watching hours of news coverage but you must assume that most children will hear or see something about the hurricane and will have questions.

“A lot of little kids have been watching this on television and it’s what the kids don’t know that will hurt them. When they don’t know the complete story they tend to fantasize even worse versions than reality,” says Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles-based psychologist who specializes in trauma.

He notes that many children aren’t geographically sophisticated enough to know where the disaster even occurred. They may imagine it happened down the street and they’re in imminent danger even if you’re thousands of miles away.

“It’s important for parents to tell kids that it was bad and it happened there but it’s not going to happen to them,” says Butterworth. “You need to ask them ‘What do you think about what happened?’ Let them talk.”

Encourage kids everywhere to help
Kids old enough to host a bake sale or collect money — even nickels and pennies — to donate to the Red Cross, for example, should be encouraged to do so.

“Doing something to help will make them feel important and useful,” says Butterworth.

Remember, too, that we all live in regions where some kind of disaster can occur. Hurricane Katrina may have your children thinking about tornadoes or earthquakes in your area. This is the perfect opportunity, says Butterworth, to go over disaster preparedness. “You need to tell your kids that you have a plan. ‘As a family, if we can’t go home, this is where we’ll go and this is what we’ll do,’” he says.

Others note that it’s also an opportunity to truly get your act together. “When I was listening to coverage about this beforehand I kept hearing about people getting prepared and being advised to have three days or even a week’s worth of supplies,” says David Sattler, a professor of psychology at Western Washington University who has researched survivors' psychological responses to natural disasters since Hurricane Hugo in 1989. “The recommendation really is that we should all have at least two weeks worth of supplies in our family emergency kit.”

Having food, water and first-aid supplies stocked away — even having a homeowner’s insurance or renter’s insurance policy — can serve as building blocks for mental stability and security, he says. Parents can point these items out to children.

Re-establish a routine
Of course, the children directly affected by Hurricane Katrina will have a much tougher challenge ahead. As their parents deal with figuring out their lives, psychologists say it’s most important to re-establish some kind of routine for children.

“With disasters of this magnitude there is acute anxiety, confusion and not knowing what is going to happen next,” explains Sattler. “Things are so unpredictable but predictability is the key to regaining balance, especially for children.”

A routine, in fact, is far more important than regaining any material possessions, he says. The routine will obviously be somewhat altered depending on circumstances but adding back familiar activities big and small will help (i.e. getting back in school, reading bedtime stories, having meals together).

The children will need adults to help them understand in simple terms what’s happened and, most important, that things will eventually be OK. A first step, for example, may be telling them that the hurricane caused too much damage to go home but that they are welcome and safe where they’re staying.

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