It’s part of good parenting to talk to your children but the events in Ottawa this week will require this important duty be done with an effort to monitor how kids are feeling. Children are able to sort out the reality here and it may have a profound impact on their sense of just how safe they, how safe the family is Sandra Mendlowitz is a clinical psychologist in the anxiety disorders program at the Hospital for Sick Children. She sugests parents talk to children with the intent of getting them to talk and of listening to what they say. Words of reasonable and realistic reassurance can be helpful even if they can’t make the terrible truth go away. She says: “Find out what they’re worried about. Find out what they know. Because sometimes parents assume kids know things that they actually don’t know.”
