Managing Kids Earthquake Fears
It’s the deer-in-the-headlights What the hell do I do for something so incredibly hopeless? For a country already in such dire straits? Why do I feel like such an ass that I didn’t focus in on the despicable conditions in Haiti before? How come it took yet another complete biblical act to draw the world’s attention to the single poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? And, how do I explain this disaster to my children without them becoming paralyzed with fear themselves?
I’ve written about my own earthquake experiences before. I’ve written about my fear of fears before and trying to ensure my children are not fearful for the things we cannot control in life. But the fears they have over the disaster in Haiti are real and all around them. In response, I’ve come up with my kid checklist:
1. Safety first. All our kids in California go through earthquake drills at school. Make sure there is a plan for home. In our home we told the kids to go to the door jams and we would come to them. We told them not to run or hide or try to find us. We showed them where to go and how to protect their heads.
2. Mental safety. We told the kids that they lived in a safe house, built with safe materials. We told them that in Haiti houses were not built the same way. We ensured them that the disaster they see on TV (and everywhere) isn’t going to happen on that magnitude to their home or to their school. We patiently sat at the dinner table and answered questions to ensure they *felt* safe.
3. “I Don’t Know.’ Saying “I don’t know,” to questions about how big earthquakes will be here, will it happen at school, will the power go out, when will it happen all have one answer: I Don’t Know. That’s a hard thing to say to a child when they are fully reliant on you for answers. The only thing that helped the kids was when I told them they’d been through earthquakes, that mommy had been through big earthquakes that there will most certainly be earthquakes in the future and that I had always been safe, even in the worst scenarios.
4. Empower the munchkins. Both kids dumped out their piggy banks and gave most of their money to Haiti relief. They had no problem doing it. They were excited, actually. We also let them talk about Haiti, looked it up on the map, talked about their exports and what they might need (blankets, stuffies, Hersey’s Kisses). At dinner, Thing 1 asked if I could say a prayer for the children of Haiti. Since we don’t pray before our meals, I was pretty shocked. But we did it. It was his idea. He felt he was doing something to help. Thing 2 said she wanted to go teach the Haitians to fish because if you give them fish, they’ll only eat for a day. She takes the parable literally and wanted to go teach them to fish with her fishing rod so they could eat for a lifetime. The beautiful power of children.
5. Manage the media. Now, of course we’re all shielding our kids from the Haiti coverage, but really, look around. It’s simply everywhere right now. Try to manage what they see. No dead bodies. No blood. No famine. I let them see something about the airplanes coming in dropping food and water so they could see what the help is like. The positive side, if there is one, can’t be found as easy as the disaster of it all.
6. Get creative. We are going to have a Haiti garage sale. I’m going to try and get our whole street to do it. It won’t be this week or next, but probably in mid-March. The vast needs in Haiti will go on for years. I’d like to see something done where kids and families come together. The money will be sent to Haitian aid groups, but the Karma will be sent immediately.
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I Feel The Earth Move…
…under my feet. I feel the sky tumbling down. I feel my heart start to tremble; whenever you’re around.” The lyrics to Carol King’s song keeps going through my head. I’ve been singing it for two days while the horrible disaster in Haiti unfolds before my very finger tips across the web. I laughed out-loud at a still image of a woman in her bra and underwear carrying her child through the rubble — “D’oh!,” I said audibly. And last night I watched hours of CNN’s earthquake coverage not for the story or for the massiveness of it all, but because I couldn’t stop looking at how hot Anderson Cooper looked in his ragged in-the-trenches garb. Really, honestly, what the hell is wrong with me?
I suppose coping mechanisms for disaster happen all the time. As the aid flies in toward the complete devastation zone, I think about the survivors more than I think of the dead. Not the ones that might survive or that we’ll see plucked from the rubble, but the ones who survived just fine. I have lived in California most of my life, where earthquakes are common and I’ve survived just fine but not without being shaken to my core with fear. On January 17, 1994 at 4:31 a.m., my world rattled when the Northridge quake hit my community with an angry fervor.
The mattress on my bed slid off the frame as the picture above my bed crashed onto my back. I tried to scramble out of my apartment while the seemingly endless jerking motion pushed me into the wall. The contents of my apartment were literally flying across the room. I climbed over the toppled heaps on my floor and made it to my front door. From there I could tell the power was out and a smell of sweet gas in the air. I ran down the hall toward the emergency exit, not even noticing the cuts on my feet. Before making it to the stairs, the earth shook so severely that I was knocked into a doorway of another apartment. There I found a dozen or so Vietnamese students I’d never met, huddling in the door jams, crying and shaking. We all held each other in the deepest dark I’ve ever known. I will never forget the smell. Moments later, we held hands as we tried to get down the fire escape. The stairs had separated from the building. Together we made our way down the damaged exit and ran to an open parking lot with hundreds of other apartment dwellers. I looked around in complete shock and fear and then, started uncontrollably laughing. Everyone was in their underwear! For some reason, this struck me as hilarious! Coping mechanisms, like I said before, are your brain’s way of not simply dying of fear.
In the end, my apartment was orange tagged. Most of my stuff was gone, but really, I didn’t have much anyway. And the clothes I did get out of my apartment were donated, since I couldn’t get the smell of gas out of the fabric. It made me gag. For years — literally years — I woke up at 4:31 a.m.
What will the survivors be like after the dust settles in Haiti? How long will they wake at 6:21 a.m. with the deepest fear? Will the smells change the way they breathe forever? What is the life ahead for them? I simply got a new apartment and decked it out with new things. What if there was nowhere to go? What if I couldn’t get rid of my soiled clothes because those were the only ones I had left. During the Northridge quake, we rationed food and water. Some people were selling batteries, bread and milk at a 500-percent markup; others were standing in the street handing out the items for free. There are good and bad people everywhere. Just like Haiti, the dregs and heroes of society will rise during crisis.
There is so much that Haiti will need. There are so many places to give, so many resources, social media communities and volunteer groups that will help. I feel so hopeless for them all. Not surprisingly, I woke at 4:31 a.m. this morning. For now, all I can offer is the empathy I have for the survivors’ fear, for the rattling noise ringing in their ears.
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Side Gigs
