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Distinguish between your feelings and your children’s feelings. For parents, one of the most challenging things about this kind of a disaster is the fact that we are having our own reactions at the same time we are called upon to respond to our children. Because children’s experiences are so highly influenced by our emotions, clarifying the difference between our feelings and theirs is essential.
Each of us perceives events through the lens of our own life experience. For those of us who have lived in countries at war or under siege, terror may be our predominant response to the attacks on New York and Washington DC. If we’ve lost loved ones through accident or tragedy, old feelings of loss may be re-stimulated. For most of us, feelings of vulnerability, sadness, worry, fear and anger will all jockey for position us as we struggle to figure out how to keep our precious children safe in an uncertain world.
Children, who don’t share our life experience, will most likely have very different perceptions and reactions than we do. In order for us to clearly focus on what they need, we must first find ways to explore, acknowledge and express our own feelings.
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