After a terrorist attack, how to keep a child’s anxiety at bay.
“I do think that unfortunately, exposure to terrorism has become a fact of life to kids growing up today, and we have to talk about it like other facts of life,” says Kathleen Trainor, a child psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, instructor at Harvard University, and author of the upcoming book Calming Your Anxious Child: Words to Say and Things to Do. “Be open to questions and create a space to ask questions, but do not force kids to talk about it. But that’s a thin line. You don’t want to impose too much information on them.”