How not to talk to your child about natural disasters

So Carter started asking about volcanoes the other night because he saw a volcano on a cartoon he was watching. Nate was like, “Oh you don’t need to worry about volcanoes, they are all far away from us! The only thing that would happen to us is an earthquake.”

NICE. That opened up a whole long discussion of what earthquakes are and how we don’t need to be scared cause it might not happen, but then again it might, we just need to be prepared… oh man once we got started the deeper it got and the more I was thinking to myself “oh shoot, shouldn’t have said THAT” and Carter is crying, tears rolling down his face, because we scared him so much!!!!! YEAH WE ARE AWFUL PARENTS!!!! I mean how do you explain this to a 4-year-old? We taught the kids how to protect themselves in an earthquake by getting under the table or stand in a doorway (I mean IS this still the protocol?!!!) because things will be shaking and breaking and falling down. SO THEN he tearfully asks, “So when our house breaks is it going to be fixed?” and I say, “Yeah it will be fixed!” He goes , “But that will take a long time!” and has another fit of tears and I say, “Carter, even if our house breaks, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is our family. If we are all together that is more important than any of our things.” He thinks for a second, then asks, “But will Addie’s house break too?” I say, “Probably all the houses by us will break. But it will be okay. EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY! I would come and find all you guys and protect you. And we’ll hold hands like this.” That made him calm down a little.

I mean how do you explain bad things to kids without freaking them out?? So far my record is terrible, because a few months ago when we talked about strangers we ended up the same way, with Carter so upset that he is just crying, asking me, “But why will a stranger take me away?” and I’m like “A stranger is not going to take you away!!! But… sometimes people are bad and might try...”  AH what am I SAYING! He says, “But I don’t want a stranger to take me away!” “Carter nobody’s gonna take you away! But… JUST IN CASE, this is what you do…” That conversation did not go well either.

It’s something we all have to learn I guess… like I wrote about recently, we can’t live our lives in fear, right? We somehow have to live for the best while preparing for the worst. I guess!!!!

It WAS funny though, after Carter stopped crying about the earthquakes, he started asking countless questions about them. Stuff like:

“Do earthquakes break beds?” “Yeah they can break beds, they can break lots of things.”

“And our clothes? We would need to get new clothes?” “Yeah we would get new clothes.”

“Is there an earthquake that could break all the houses in the world?” “No, they only hit certain places in the world.” “Oh. Cause we can’t fix all the houses in the world, huh.” Sure… So we explain that sometimes there are big earthquakes and sometimes there are little earthquakes.

Then he asks, “Can I step on a little one?” “A little what? An earthquake??” “Yeah if it is little, then I can step on it.” Ha ha at this point I am like okay I did not explain this very well, did I? I’d love to get in his head and see him squishing that big, bad earthquake like a bug.

THEN he asks, “Do earthquakes melt?” “Uhhhh melt?? Nooo, they don’t melt… ” “Then how do they go away?” “Well they just shake the earth and then go away.” “Oh, like they go down the sidewalk?” Yes it just rolls on down the sidewalk. Um I didn't want to get into plate tectonics, but maybe I needed to!  It was pretty funny.

I’d just show him “The Land Before Time” and call it good, but I’m afraid that will just freak him out again, don’t you think?? Maybe we’ll just avoid the subject for awhile... and I shall brush up on my parent-child-communication skills about Important Things cause right now they are pretty poor.