What to Do When the News Scares You

Book excerpt: This latest installment in the bestselling What To Do series tackles children’s feelings of anxiety around current events and what is portrayed in the news. Scary news is an inevitable part of life. This book can support and guide efforts to help scary news seem a bit more manageable for young people. Whether from television news reports, the car radio, digital media, or adult discussions, children are often bombarded with information about the world around them. When the events being described include violence, extreme weather events, a disease outbreak, or discussions of more dispersed threats such as climate change, children may become frightened and overwhelmed. Parents and caregivers can be prepared to help them understand and process the messages around them by using this book. What to Do When the News Scares You provides a way to help children put scary events into perspective. And, if children start to worry or become anxious about things they’ve heard, there are ideas to help them calm down and cope. This book also helps children identify reporters’ efforts to add excitement to the story which may also make threats seem more imminent, universal, and extreme. Read and complete the activities in What to Do When the News Scares You with your child to help them to understand the news in context—who, what, where, when, how—as a means of introducing a sense of perspective. Also available in Spanish Qué Hacer Cuando las Noticias te Asustan: Guía para Niños para Entender las Noticias Actuales Chapters include: Extensive note to parents and caregivers Chapter 1. Sometimes scary things happen. Chapter 2. What is news? Chapter 3. Things that make the news more scary Chapter 4. Did you see that! Chapter 5. Keeping it real Chapter 6. Un-news Chapter 7. Taking care of you. Chapter 8. Plan of action Chapter 9. You Can Do It!