What to Do When the News Scares You: A Kid's Guide to Understanding Current Events

Written by Jacqueline B. Toner

Illustrated by Janet McDonnell

Whether from television news reports, the car radio, digital media, or adult discussions, children are often bombarded with information about the world around them. When the events being described include violence, extreme weather events, a disease outbreak, or discussions of more dispersed threats such as climate change, children may become frightened and overwhelmed. Parents and caregivers can be prepared to help them understand and process the messages around them by using this book.
What to Do When the News Scares You provides a way to help children put scary events into perspective. And, if children start to worry or become anxious about things they’ve heard, there are ideas to help them calm down and cope. This book also helps children identify reporters’ efforts to add excitement to the story which may also make threats seem more imminent, universal, and extreme.

Read and complete the activities in What to Do When the News Scares You with your child to help them to understand the news in context—who, what, where, when, how—as a means of introducing a sense of perspective.
 
Chapters include:
Extensive note to parents and caregivers
Chapter 1. Sometimes scary things happen. 
Chapter 2. What is news? 
Chapter 3. Things that make the news more scary
Chapter 4. Did you see that!
Chapter 5.  Keeping it real
Chapter 6.  Un-news
Chapter 7. Taking care of you.
Chapter 8. Plan of action
Chapter 9. You Can Do It!