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How to calm A's fear/concern about severe weather?

belle204belle204 member
in Parenting
Obviously, if I've been having problems I don't expect it to be easy for her but I don't let her see me upset. Last night she was telling me she wanted to go to my mom's because we're supposed to have a thunderstorm today and she wanted to double-check the Weather Channel. I wouldn't let her watch the WC (they had been talking about tornadoes and severe weather in other places) and I keep telling her some rain or a thunderstorm doesn't mean a tornado. But, in her mind, "a tornado is coming and it kills people and kills houses." I don't want to brush her off but I don't want to elicit unnecessary fear either. Tornado season isn't over and the second season comes in November.
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Re: How to calm A's fear/concern about severe weather?

  • madhatter2003madhatter2003

    It is hard since they can't really understand the different 'levels' of severity that come with weather.  I would just keep telling her like you did that thunderstorms do not equal tornadoes.

    I have a few friends from college that do school talks with kids, I'll see if they can recommend a book or something. (I'm a meteorologist, but not a TV one).

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  • belle204belle204 member

    What a neat job. :-) Thanks. I would appreciate that. She has been fascinated with weather for a few months so it's a bit of a double-edge sword if you will.

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  • Mrs LouMrs Lou
    Girl I'm having the same problem, all the way to drop off this morning, she was starting at the clouds saying it was a shelf, and wall cloud....asking over and over, are we going to have a twister tornado, or a ground tornado. It scares me too, but I don't want her to be so fearful!
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  • belle204belle204 member
    L, I'm sorry M's having a hard time, too. Poor girls. She's questioning me and when I told her there's nothing to worry about she said, "but, the tornado crashed the other houses." Life was much easier before they knew what was going on. Looks like the sun is coming out now at least.
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  • warriormomerinwarriormomerin

    I don't have any experience dealing with trauma related to storms, but I do have a kid who has been through lots of therapy for trauma.

    One of the big things we learned in therapy that really helped a lot was letting he do a "trauma narrative" anytime she was feeling anxious or worried about something. For kids this young, it can be really hard for them to express their feelings through words so they often find comforts in other ways of expressing them such as play acting, drawing, painting, etc. For DD, it was through drawing.

    Anytime she wanted to talk about something that was bothering/scaring/worrying her, I'd ask her to draw me a picture that described how she was feeling or what she was afraid of. It sounds kind of hokey, but it really worked. She was able to better explain herself and once she got the fear out there, it wasn't such a big issue.

    I'm not sure if something similar would help your A, but it couldn't hurt to try it.

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  • madhatter2003madhatter2003

    So the suggestion for close to her age (might be a bit 'young') would be "Franklin and the Thunderstorm" here is the link on Amazon:

     https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0590026356/severecomstornad

    Hope this helps some!

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