Children’s Reactions
Children’s Reactions
Children in crisis present a complex challenge. Children in various age groups have specific needs and respond differently to the same crisis event. A serious problem in working with children in crisis situations is that the workers tend to become emotionally involved with the children they are attempting to help. Emotional involvement frequently interferes with proper crisis management.
Reactions of children to a disaster can have both short term and long term effects. A child’s view of his or her world as safe and predictable is temporarily lost. Most children have difficulty understanding the damage, injuries, or death that can result from an unexpected or uncontrollable event.
A basic principle in working with children who have experienced a disaster is relating to them as essentially normal children who have experienced a great deal of stress. Most of the problems that appear are likely to be directly related to the disaster and are transitory in nature. Relief from stress and the passage of time will help re-establish equilibrium and functioning for most children without outside help.
Children will often express anger and fear after a disaster. These will be evidenced through continuing anxieties about recurrence of the event, injury, death, or separation and loss. In dealing with children’s fears and anxieties, it is best to accept them as being very real to the child. The reactions of the adults around them can also make a great deal of difference in their recovery from the shock of a disaster.
Preschool Children
Children's perceptions of a disaster are primarily determined by the reactions of their parents. Children of preschool age believe that their parents can protect them from all danger. They believe they cannot survive without them. They fear being injured, lost, or abandoned and these fears increase when they find themselves alone or among strangers.
Adults should be aware that the fertile imagination of preschool children makes them more fearful. Three levels of anxiety in pre-school children in a disaster can be identified:
One can respond to the objective fears of children of this age by taking into account their degree of maturity and type of imagination. Adults should help them live through the event and conquer their fears to help prevent the fears from persisting into adulthood.
Generally, young children express themselves little verbally. It is their behavior that reveals their anxiety and fear.
The intensity and duration of a child’s symptoms decrease more rapidly when his or her family or other significant adults are able to indicate that they understand his or her feelings. Children are most fearful when they do not understand what is going on around them. Every effort should be made to keep them accurately informed, thereby relieving their anxieties. Talking with children, providing simple accurate information about the disaster, and listening to what they have to say are probably the most important things we can do. Sharing the fact that adults were frightened too and that it is normal and natural to be afraid is also reassuring to a child. It is comforting to hear "fear is natural. Everybody is afraid at times."
Sleep disturbances are very common for children following a disaster. Behavior is likely to take the form of resistance to bedtime, wakefulness, unwillingness to sleep in their own rooms or beds, refusal to sleep by themselves, desire to be in a parent's bed or to sleep with a light, and insistence that the parent stay in the room until they fall asleep. These behaviors are disruptive to a child’s well being. They also increase stress for parents. Some of the more persistent bedtime problems, like night terrors, nightmares, and refusal to fall asleep may point to deep-seated fears and anxieties which may require professional intervention.
When talking with clients with children, it is helpful to explore the family’s sleep arrangements. They may need to develop a familiar bedtime routine. This might include reinstating a specific time for going to bed. The family may find it helpful to plan calming, pre-bedtime activities to help reduce chaos in the evening. Developing a quiet recreation which includes the whole family as participants can also be helpful.
CHILDREN'S REACTIONS TO DISASTER
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Ages 6-12
The attitude of the family and the environment have great influence on the degree of anxiety experienced by the child and on what mechanisms the child uses in both the short and long term to cope with stressful situations or events.
The reaction may be immediate or delayed, brief or prolonged, intense or minimal. The child reacts with his/her present personality at a given level of biological and emotional development. The nature and intensity of the reaction will be determined by the child's temperament as well as past experiences. Faced with the same stressful situation, two children may react in entirely different ways. These reactions suggest the adaptations the child is making to assimilate, cope with, and "accept" the painful situation.
The reactions most often expressed will translate in various ways the child's anxiety and his/her defenses against it. These will vary with the age of the child. These include: fear, fright, sleep disturbances, nightmares, loss of appetite, aggressiveness, anger, refusal to go to school, behavioral problems, lack of interest in school, inability to concentrate in school or at play. Sometimes these difficulties occur only in school. Sometimes they only occur at home with the child functioning adequately in the school environment.
An anxious child needs security and, above all, love. The role of the adult consists of helping the child psychologically and trying to understand him/her.
Children can be spared much anxiety if we try to imagine their reaction to the event. Seeing through the child's eyes helps the adult to prepare the child emotionally to face events calmly and confidently as they occur.
Reactions can be prevented or lessened by clarifying the situation through open communication about the traumatic event or situation by those close to the child.
Fears And Anxieties
Fear is a normal reaction to disaster, frequently expressed through continuing anxieties about recurrence of the disaster, injury, death, separation and loss. Because children's fears and anxieties after a disaster often seem strange and unconnected to anything specific in their lives, their relationship to the disaster may be difficult to determine. In dealing with children's fears and anxieties, it is generally best to accept them as being very real to the children. For example, children's fears of returning to the room or school they were in when the disaster struck should be accepted at face value. Treatment efforts should begin with talking about those experiences and reactions.
Before the family can help, however, the children's needs must be understood. This requires an understanding of the family's needs. Families have their own shared beliefs, values, fears and anxieties. Frequently, the children's malfunctioning is a mirror of something wrong in the family. Dissuading them of their fears will not prove effective if their families have the same fears and continue to reinforce them. A family interview should be conducted in which the interviewer can observe the relationship of the children and their families, conceptualize the dynamics of the child-family interactions, and involve the family in a self-help system.
The parents' or adults' reactions to the children make a great difference in their recovery. The intensity and duration of the children's symptoms decrease more rapidly when the families are able to indicate that they understand their feelings. When the children feel that their parents do not understand their fears, they feel ashamed, rejected, and unloved. Tolerance of temporary regressive behavior allows the children to re-develop anew those coping patterns which had been functioning before. Praise offered for positive behavior produces positive change. Routine rules need to be relaxed to allow time for regressive behaviors to run their course and the re-integration process to take place.
When the children show excessive clinging and unwillingness to let their parents out of their sight, they are actually expressing and handling their fears and anxieties of separation or loss most appropriately. They have detected the harmful effects of being separated from their parents and, in their clinging, are trying to prevent a possible recurrence. Generally, the children's fears dissolve when the threat of danger has dissipated and they feel secure once more under the parents' protection.
Children are most fearful when they do not understand what is happening around them. Every effort should be made to keep them accurately informed, thereby alleviating their anxieties. Adults, frequently failing to realize the capacity of children to absorb factual information, do not share what they know, and children receive only partial or erroneous information. Children are developing storehouses of all kinds of information and respond to scientific facts and figures, new language, technical terms, and predictions. Following the 1971 earthquake, the children in Los Angeles were observed to become instant experts. The language used by them in a daycare setting was enriched by technical terms, such as Richter Scale, aftershock, temblor, etc. The children learned these new words from the media and incorporated them readily, using them in play and in talking with each other.
The family should make an effort to remain together as much as possible, for a disaster is a time when the children need their significant adults around them. In addition, the model the adults present at this time can be growth enhancing. For example, when the parents act with strength and calmness, maintaining control at the same time they share feelings of being afraid, they serve the purpose of letting the children see that it is possible to act courageously even in times of stress and fear.
Sleep disturbances are among the most common problems for children following a disaster. Their behavior is likely to take the form of resistance to bedtime, wakefulness, unwillingness to sleep in their own rooms or beds, refusal to sleep by themselves, desire to be in a parent's bed or to sleep with a light, insistence that the parent stay in the room until they fall asleep, and excessively early rising. Such behaviors are disruptive to a child's well-being. They also increase stress for the parents, who may themselves be experiencing some adult counterpart of their child's disturbed sleep behavior. More persistent bedtime problems, such as night terrors, nightmares, continued awakening at night, and refusal to fall asleep may point to deep-seated fears and anxieties which may require professional intervention.
It is helpful to explore the family's sleep arrangements. The family may need to develop a familiar bedtime routine, such as reinstating a specific time for going to bed. They may find it helpful to plan calming, pre-bedtime activities to reduce chaos in the evening. Teenagers may need to have special consideration for bedtime privacy. Developing a quiet recreation in which the total family participates is also helpful.
Other bedtime problems of the children, such as refusing to go to their rooms or to sleep by themselves, frequent awakening at night, or nightmares can be met by greater understanding and flexibility on the part of the parents. The child may be allowed to sleep in the parents' bedroom on a mattress or in a crib, or may be moved into another child's room. A time limit on how long the change will continue should be agreed upon by both parents and child, and it should be adhered to firmly. Some children are satisfied if the parents spend a little extra time in the bedroom with them. If they come out of bad at night, they should be returned to it gently, with the reassurance of a nearby adult presence. Having a night light or leaving the door ajar are both helpful. Getting angry, punishing, spanking, or shouting at the child rarely helps and more frequently makes the situation worse. Sometimes, it becomes clear that it is actually the parent who is fearful of leaving the child alone.
Parents from middle-class families have been educated to believe that allowing their child to sleep in the parents' room has long-lasting deleterious effects on the child. Families accustomed to overcrowded and shared sleeping space have less trouble in allowing children to be close to them. Closeness between parents and children at bedtime reduces the children's and adults' fears.
Providing families with information on how to handle bedtime fears can best be done in the family setting or with groups of families meeting together. The families feel reassured upon learning that what they are experiencing is a normal, natural response, and that time and comfort are great healers. Learning that the sleep disturbance behavior is a problem shared with other families is reassuring.
School Avoidance and School Phobias
It is important for children and teenagers to attend school since, for the most part, the school is the center of life with peers. The school becomes the major source of activity, guidance, direction, and structure for the child. When a child avoids school, it may generally be assumed that a serious problem exists. One of the reasons for not going to school may be fear of leaving the family and being separated from loved ones. The fear may actually be a reflection of the family's insecurity about the child's absence from the home. Some high achieving children may be afraid of failing and, once they have missed some time at school, may have concern about returning. The low performers may find that the chaos of disaster makes it even more difficult for them to concentrate. School authorities should be flexible in the ways they encourage children to attend school.Programs designed for schools vary. Some projects involve teachers and school counselors, while others provide trained workers who have direct contact with the children and the teachers. In some instances, management within the school setting is advantageous. Troubled children can be identified by their behavior in both the classroom and on the
