Education

Education is the next principle of Preparedness. Education is important for creating an expectation. A disaster and its effects will be far less traumatic if they understand why it happened, its natural causes, and the damage it can create. Children comprehend the world through paradigms and this is what defines their day. This is why they say they can’t go to bed until its dark – despite the time their paradigm states darkness equals night time. Their experiences teach them what to expect from birthday parties, the first day of school and what can happen in an earthquake. Creating these paradigms before an event is less stressful for a child and gives them a frame of reference. It decreases the factor of fear of the unknown.

There are a number of educational resources that can help create a positive and non frightening context for disasters. Now drills play a large part here since teaching them to recognize and distinguish between disasters and what to do in them. We are going to focus a bit more on education concerning disasters from a factual standpoint. When they understand the natural processes, these are based in laws and facts that are not affected by us; it helps to address the self blame and questioning that children instinctively do in stressful or traumatic situations.

    1)      Is this my fault? They will already know that they had no bearing on the disaster and could have done little to stop it.
    2)      What happened? The imagination is one of the biggest players in children’s fears. I read an account from the earthquake in Japan where their son was scared of water monsters (deathly scared). His parents finally realized that a Tsunami sounded like the name of a monster and based on what he had gathered from the news and conversations it came from the water.

Children can understand a great deal more then we often give them credit for. It just needs approached from an age appropriate manner. Its important that we provide accurate information than for them to gather it haphazardly and form incorrect conclusions.

Education also answers the questions of what now and expectation. If having studied an earthquake they will have seen pictures of devastation. Thus when it happens to them they will be less traumatized.

See my page Natural Disaster Educational Resources for a list of the best sites, games, books, and resources that we have found.