TITLE:     Disturbance of  Scary News to Children: How can a Parent Response in terms of their Guidance.

 ABSTRACT:                                                                                                                             

These research is done for the improvement and awareness of the parents in terms of giving their guidance to their young ones toward the disturbance of News Reports into a child. These would help not only the parents but also the children to be comfortable in hearing scary news and headlines on TV. This research wants to attain different events in the world; decreasing child mortality and ignorance, unpleasant behavior of young ones and distorted views of children toward the world and to people. This research is effective as the graphs shown below. There were four suggestions below that aims to cure this syndrome that children has’. By parents guidance, children will be able to cope up with the News Reports on TV.

INTRODUCTION:

                          Nowadays, news reports broadcasted by different Networking Stations had really affect not only adults who can barely understand the scary and tragic news but also the young ones, the children! ’40 percent of parents said that their children had been upset by something they saw in the news and that, as a result, the children had feared that a similar event would happen to them or their loved ones(suvey said).

                         

Children ages 3 to 12 had reported as one of the most people who always watch television. It is because of the entertaining cartoons and shows that kids really love to watch. But we cannot avoid that they could watch and see the news reported by different networks. And these affect childrens’ behavior, emotionally and physically. “Children who watch a lot of TV news tend to overestimate the prevalence of crime and may perceive the world to be a more dangerous place than it actually is,”(Kaiser Family Foundation).

There were two main factors why children were frighten up of new reports. First is the children interprets the news differently from adults. They do believed that tragedy that is broadcasted repeatedly will happen repeatedly. The second factor is the daily disturbing events can distort a child’s view of the world.

Like as said, there were different events and experiences wherein children behavior at news were seen. “My 11-year- old daughter doesn’t like watching the news. She often has nightmares about what she has seen. One time, she watched a report about a person who decapitated a family member. That night she dreamed that she too was being decapitated.”-Quinn. “My six-year-old niece saw reports of tornadoes from elsewhere in the country. For weeks afterward, she was terrified. She would call me on the phone, convinced that a tornado was coming her way and that she was going to die.” –Paige.

These shared experiences caught my attention and be my reason for doing these kind of research. I wanted to decrease the number of children who feared the world much just because of watching news reports on TV. However, I still aim and persue that parents would take their important role in molding their child’s attitude, behavior and perception towards these kind of situations. My research focus nearly on parents emotional, moral and physical guidance to be able to attain child’s comfortable feelings and balance perspective on watching TV News Reports.

METHODS/PROCEDURE:

If disturbing news reports are affecting your children, what can you do? Here are a few suggestions.

Protect them. Based on the age, maturity, and emotional makeup of your children, consider setting limits on the amount of exposure they have to the news. Of course, in our information age, children are not ignorant of current events. Even little children may see or hear more than you realize. Therefore, be alert to any signs of fear or anxiety that your children may display-(ref.).

                              We could protect our children by watching TV together with them. We should be able of having time to spent with them. We should protect them against news that could harm their way of thingking and views to the world.

Educate them. As your children get older, consider watching the news with them. In that setting, you can use the news as an opportunity to teach. Try to emphasize any positive aspects of a report-for example, relief efforts being made to help victims of some disasters-(ref).

                              We can do educate them by telling them the realities about the news on TV. Maybe, it would be so much harmful and scary to think that what they watched would do happen to them as really as it. But we should tell them that prayer will endure all fears inside. We should learn to let them believe and trust God. That with Him, nothing dangerous could happen. But we should not forget to remind them that we should not be so dependent at Him. We should therefore do our responsibilities as a parent by telling them to keep calm and teach what to do and don’ts if she/he is in that situation. Remember that being a parent is being a teacher too.

Reassure them. When a disturbing event is reported, draw out your children to find out how they feel about what happened. “My wife and I take the time to explain to our son, Nathaniel, what he has seen on the news, as well as what precautions we’ve taken to avoid the same tragedy ourselves,” says a father named Michael. “One time, when Nathaniel saw footage of a house burning to the ground, he feared that our home would be next. To comfort him, we showed him all the smoke alarms in our house. He knows where they are and why they’re there. That helped him feel secure-(ref.).

                                 We may reassure them by showing securities surrounded at them. We may say that we are here by their side and won’t let anything bad happen to them. Like on the stated experience, we may show the securities inside or may be outside on our home for they may feel so much secure.

Maintain Perspective. Researchers have found that people tend to judge the likelihood of an event by the ease with which examples of that event come to mind. For instance, if you recently heard a child was abducted, you are likely to conclude that the threat to your child is greater than it is. Of course, it is good to be aware of potential dangers. Nevertheless, experts say that media reports can make us fear events that will probably never happen to us.

                                               If parents fail to maintain a balanced perspective of the news, they could take fears to an extreme. So could their children. For example, in 2005 an 11-year-old boy got lost in the mountains of Utah in the United States. He was so afraid of kidnappers that he hid from his rescuers for four days. When rescue workers finally found the child, he was weak and dehydrated. Even though the odds of being taken by a stranger were about 1 in 350,000, the boy’s fears led him to risk starvation rather than accept help.

                                               The lesson? Make sure that you and your children maintain a balanced perspective of the news. The fact is, many calamities are viewed as newsworthy because they are relatively rare- not because they are common-(ref.).

                                               Balanced perspective could attain by explaining to children that most of the bad and scary news would barely happen to people that has close-situated in that kind of events.

CONCLUSIONS/DISCUSSIONS:

These are simple and common suggestions of mine. But, we, people, cannot really do this. Why? Maybe of busy hours on offices and works, and being so much comfortable with them, we cannot be able to guide our children inspite of very small thing that we cannot notice that would do harm to our beloved children, watching TV! So, I really aim and hope that these research would really help you as the tables and graphs shown above the effectiveness of these things.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

~ www.jw.org

~AWAKE; ‘How to Succeed at School’- pp. 19-21 October2012 (mgzn.)

~experiences, surveys & graphs @www.google.com

~@KaiserFamilyFoundation

~pictures (mgzn.)