We would all like to protect our kids and keep them away from any negativity. However, we also know that this is not always possible. There are times when children are caught in a bad episode and it does expose them to a lot that they should not see or hear as children. Right from a divorce case to an accident to even a death, anything can expose out kids to a hard time. Since we can’t always control the situation, it is important that we teach our kids on how to deal with certain emergencies so that they can come out of the episode with least damage.
Some tips below on how we can teach our kids to deal with emergencies:
- Keep calm - The most important lesson that we need to teach the kids is to stay calm in an emergency. This is easier said than done since children are usually not that adept at keeping control on their emotions. In order to teach kids on how to stay calm during an emergency, you will need to practice a few mock drills. Talk to them about how they need to take deep breaths and not panic in an accident or other such emergencies. Teaching children to calming techniques will also help as will giving them some sort of a ‘in case of emergency’ guideline. So in case the child gets lost, he/she should stay calm and them try and get to a police officer and tell them about the situation. The more ‘in case this happens’ ‘this is what you need to do’ scenarios that you can talk to the child about, the better it is.
- Not their fault – Children often blame themselves for a lot of things and right from a fight between their parents to a death of a loved one, they can blame themselves for almost any thing. It is important that you talk to the kids about how emergencies are not their fault in any way and that they must not hide or blame themselves for these situations. This talk will help your child to deal with the emotional baggage that an emergency may dump on them. If the kids know that sometimes bad things happen to good people, they will recover from the blow much faster.
- Call for help - A large part of dealing with an emergency is calling for help. Now while the obvious here is to teach kids to call for help by dialing 911 in case they are faced with an emergency, there are other connotation to calling for help too. In case the kids find that they are not able to deal with the emotional blow of a bad incident, they should know that calling for help does not mean that they are weak and others will make fun of them and so they must seek help from parents, teachers, etc.
These simple pointers are very effective in helping kids learn about emergencies and also understand how to deal with these situations without breaking under the pressure.
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