[blparent] Your thoughts on this?

[Robert Shelton]

It is traumatic, and exposure to horrible events or the possibility of such
needs to be moderated by understanding of risks of all kinds.

I grew up in a time when many believed that a nuclear war was all but
certain.  I think those images scarred a whole generation, and in many ways
we're still seeing echoes of that greatest of all fears, but then, this
isn't a list for politics or psychology, and I'm not qualified in either
area.

I do think it's important for parents to begin communicating the concept of
risk as children are able to appreciate it.  The universality of news and
instant communication brings horrors into our living room, so we must also
find ways to communicate that what our children see is a distorsion of
reality.  While horrible things can and do happen, they don't happen very
often, and there are some common sense things we all can do to be as safe as
we can, without living in a bubble.  These are hard concepts for most of us
to grasp, and bringing them to relevance with children is challenging.  My
dad was an engineer, and he had a gift for explaining things like
probability to a 4 year old.  Maybe just something as simple as "Yes, these
things happen, but we hear about bad things from all over the world because
that's what people find interesting.  They don't tell stories about kids
finding lost puppies or someone who got lost on the way home from school and
then found her way home because that happens all the time.  We should be
careful, but know that most of the time, the good will outweigh the bad."

-----Original Message-----
From: Jo Elizabeth Pinto [mailto:jopinto at msn.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 1:36 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Your thoughts on this?

Well, I suppose jumping out a window as a last resort is your best option,
if your only other choice is facing the fire. Of course, in that case, I
would want my daughter to jump. But I did talk to her about touching her
door first to see if it was hot, staying low to the floor because of smoke,
and stuffing a towel or some clothes under the door to keep out the smoke. I
said jumping was good if those other things didn't work and the fire was
coming in, or if a firefighter was down on the grass telling her to jump. I
only thought actually roleplaying it with a dollhouse and people leaping out
of bed and finding the door on fire, and then jumping out the windows,
seemed pretty drastic. I guess it could be the way she perceived it, and not
exactly the way it was.  It's also true that kids learn in concrete ways, so
maybe the dollhouse was a good idea.  It just seems like we have to tell our
kids so many scary things at such a young age.  Since the shooting in
Connecticut, which I'd been trying to keep from my daughter till she heard
adults going on and on about it at church, my daughter has been asking me if
a man with a gun could get in her school--yes he could, but it's not
likely--and what will happen if everybody dies at the same time because of a
shooter and nobody lives in our town.

Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Shelton
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 12:20 PM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] Your thoughts on this?

I don't know about the reenactment with graphic descriptions, but I do know
that several volunteer fire companies visit schools to do safety
presentations.  One really important thing that they do is to show a
firefighter in various stages of donning their equipment.  The concern is
that if a child sees a firefighter fully decked out in their gear, they may
not recognize them as a human being and could be frightened into hiding.
Obviously, someone could get carried away and unnecessarily frighten the
children, but making sure they know what to do to save themselves or help
the firefighter save them seems critical.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jo Elizabeth Pinto [mailto:jopinto at msn.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2013 11:36 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: [blparent] Your thoughts on this?

on this?
My four-year-old came home from school on Friday, and when she played with
her dollhouse, she imagined that the door was on fire while everybody was in
bed. Then she started having the Dora family characters jump out the second
and third story windows. I questioned her a bit, and she said that some
officers (I call them that because she couldn't tell me for sure if they
were firefighters or policemen, since they had no big red truck, but I'm
guessing they were firefighters) brought a dollhouse to school and talked
about what to do if there was a fire in the night. She swears they acted out
a scene where the mommy doll and the little girl doll jumped out the
windows. Now I remember fire safety from when I was a kid. Stop, drop, and
roll, get out of your house and have a meeting place for your family, call
911 and all, but I don't recall anything as drastic as an enactment by
firefighters with a real dollhouse and a roleplay of dolls jumping out of a
flaming home. Do any of you have experiences with this; is it typical for
young kids to be educated this way nowadays? Does this seem a little drastic
to all of you, or am I just being protective of my little girl's innocence?
I know she has to be ready for the world and its dangers, but she doesn't
need to have fears put in her mind before she hits the ripe old age of five,
either. It seems a bit much, coming on the heels of the school shooting
drills.


Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


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