My poor guy's anxiety

[OrganicJen]

I'm just sharing this in case it helps others. My son likes to discuss current events and over the past few months has brought up North Korea missile testing and also has brought up nuclear missiles and radiation at other times. I answered his questions and didn't think much more of it. Well, in a discussion yesterday it came out that he has been thinking all this time that North Korea has been launching armed nuclear missiles that have been releasing radiation into our atmosphere and he's been very stressed about it. I wish I had thought to go deeper into our conversations earlier so that he wouldn't have stressed about this. I think I forgot how terrifying the news can be even to a 15 year old (with mild learning challenges) who reads headlines and doesn't really investigate further on his own. I mean the news is stressful for me so of course it would probably be even more so for him. He loves current events though and I think it's great for him to keep up on current events, but I'm realizing I need to really take the time to talk the news through with him.

[Miss Tick]

Oh, man! It us so hard to know what is going through other people's heads, even when we are with them everyday! I hope your explanation allayed his fears.

[OrganicJen]

I think he's okay now and we talked more about it and about the news in general. It's hard to know what to tell him sometimes. Today he asked, "how can I exercise my rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, in a society where I'm afraid to leave the house because anywhere I go someone can decide to shoot me from far away...I wouldn't stand a chance, and wouldn't have a way to even try to defend myself or run away." I feel like my poor kid has ptsd just from hearing about what happens in the news. Sigh.

[Liz CA]

I am glad you were able to have a conversation with him and clarify his misunderstanding.

I literally just read an scientific article for work that detailed the findings of "Secondary" and "Indirect" trauma as well as the trauma created by media due to the repeated exposure of violent scenes, networks running the same footage over and over again. Our brains sometimes become slower in putting a marker down as to what is truly over or what is happening continuously - and this is an adolescent brain.

 

When my ds was growing up, we didn't have cable / satellite and Internet news was not even what is today. I never thought I would say this but I am all for limiting consumption to reputable sources - and even then limiting consumption period. It is a sign of your ds's intellectual curiosity that he is interested in current affairs but since we are so saturated with images and speculation, I think discussion with the family is great without viewing segments from media sources that are all concerned with their ratings and operate on the principle "the more scandalous, violent, outrageous and dramatic the content, the more people are drawn to it."

[OrganicJen]

I think he's okay now and we talked more about it and about the news in general. It's hard to know what to tell him sometimes. Today he asked, "how can I exercise my rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, in a society where I'm afraid to leave the house because anywhere I go someone can decide to shoot me from far away...I wouldn't stand a chance, and wouldn't have a way to even try to defend myself or run away." I feel like my poor kid has ptsd just from hearing about what happens in the news. Sigh.

[Guest]

Thank you, Jen.

[OrganicJen]

What's disturbing too, is that we don't have TV, so he actually just gets the news by reading...mainly headlines I think though. So, it's like the news is so scary for him now that it doesn't even take ratings grabbing images for him to be stressed out. At least now I'm more aware of this and talking about it all with him a lot more. It still sort of haunts me thinking about how scared he must have been all this time thinking nuclear bombs have been going off, and how it must feel for him now going out to play thinking he might get shot and killed while playing basketball. I know as a teen he thinks a lot about his future so I can't imagine with all the terrible things in the news what he must think his future holds.

[Guest]

I would never have raised a nine year old this way in the 1990s and 2000s, but it really is this bad.

 

Cold War baby here. Dad was indirectly in defense. He designed guidance systems for intercontinental ballistic missiles until he couldn't any more, said, "If the world is going to go boom, it's going to have to do it without me!" and walked out.

 

He found a job unloading boxcars for minimum wage. I love my dad.

 

He and my mom loved me. They waited to talk about Big Important Grownup Things That Little Girls Don't Understand until I was in bed.

 

The whole point of this self-indulgent anecdote is that kids aren't always asleep after you put them in bed! Every single passenger plane that flew overhead during my entire childhood was a Russian bomber getting ready to drop the Big One and my greatest fear was that I would survive and nobody else would.

 

I finally told another living human being when I was thirty-fivish, and even then I pretended it was just a short story for a writing contest.

 

Jen, I am so glad you had this talk with your son. Enjoy his metamorphosis over the next few days and please try not to beat yourself up over this. I'm friends (or at least friendly) with folks all over the political spectrum including the far radical fringes and we're all going through this super-high stress period of history in much the same way.

 

News fasts are a part of life. Sometimes I work on my router just to have a valid excuse to tell ds the internet is down. Maybe it's not so easy with books, but I wrote a review for one book that might help him deal with where we are in history and another I highly recommend (if you can find it) is The Chestry Oak, by Kate Seredy.

 

We haven't finished it, but right now it reads like a soothing fairy tale about ds' place in history with all the names and places changed to protect the innocent. There's a lot out there in children's literature that can help them process current events. We need a thread for that but I'm turning into an internet zombie so someone else needs to start it. :)

Edited October 6, 2017 by Guest

[OrganicJen]

Thanks so much I'll look for those books. It's interesting you brought up the cold war because I just used that as an analogy when talking with my husband about this earlier today. The other thing that all of this reminded me of was a movie in which a father gets his son to believe everything in a concentration camp they are in is a game so that he won't be afraid. Part of me wishes I could just shield him from it all but in this situation that isn't an option. He's so interested in current events and politics and is already excited to vote in a few years so I'm just going to do a lot more education with him about all of these events in the news so that current events can remain a positive thing for him.

[Liz CA]

You are right. You cannot shield him from everything but discussing things may go a long way in putting some events into perspective. Since you know he is reading a lot of stuff / news, can you read it together?

[foxbridgeacademy]

I remember being terrified in the 80's that Russia was going to bomb us.  We lived near Crane Naval Airforce Base which I was told, by my clueless to my fear parents, was a possible target.  I spent years absolutely terrified.  I wish someone had done a better job of explaining things to me.  Instead they had us do duck and cover drills at school, like that was going to save us from a strike 20 miles away.

[OrganicJen]

You are right. You cannot shield him from everything but discussing things may go a long way in putting some events into perspective. Since you know he is reading a lot of stuff / news, can you read it together?

 

Yep we do plan to read it together as much as possible now so we can discuss it right from the start.  

[dsmith]

I remember being unable to sleep when I was young, thinking that a nuclear bomb could be headed our way at any time. Reading the civil defense stuff my dad had around his office when he was in local government probably didn't help. My aspie son can get very nervous from what's going on in the world. Thankfully North Korea isn't making him particularly nervous, but the mass shootings are. We usually talk about stuff while we are making a Starbucks run. It's about 20 minutes from the house, and the trip gives us a good opportunity to discuss what's going on in the world. It's really the only reason I go to that one besides being a drive-thru. (Yes, I'm that lazy! There is a regular Starbucks at the bottom of our street, lol.)

[RootAnn]

Yep, I have an anxious kid (who used to ask me every night if there was going to be a tornado or if the house was going to catch fire). We held off on her watching CNN 10 (CNN Student News) for years because of it. I wish I could always assure her that things will turn out okay or that she (or other family member) will never get cancer or be shot at, but of course, I can't promise those things. Over the years, I've definitely worked on my answers. I end up falling back on statistics & probability a lot of the time - but as she isn't a math person - it isn't too helpful.

[eternalsummer]

I was an anxious kid in a similar way.  Part of what helps me handle it better as an adult is a more thorough understanding of what is actually happening, and what it means.  When I was younger no one thought to explain these things in factual terms (and to be fair, there is still a lot of fearmongering and misunderstanding about many of these issues even among adults).  

[Guest]

We tried to hide Columbine from my older son. My daughter, who isn't even three years older than him, was in on it and completely approved. We didn't have a TV or internet or anything, so it seemed like a simple matter of pretending that the newspaper was being stolen off our front porch.

 

It didn't turn out that well.

 

We were at some sort of church event and somebody turned on the radio. The kids were dancing and having a great time until the news came on.

 

Soldier Boy Combat Vet Army Dude has always been extremely sensitive and extremely intelligent. He's my undiagnosed 2e and who knows what's inside that amazing brain of his. Mostly he was embarrassed about what the other kids thought of him, because it was just old news and background noise to him.

 

He handled it well and I don't think anyone even noticed, but he had to run to the bathroom very quickly and some people were afraid he was sick in there and wanted to make sure I knew so i could clean it up.

 

It wasn't his digestive system that was sick, it was his heart. It was just too much to process all at once, especially in public in front of kids who he wanted to be friends with in a similar "just visiting" "unpopular opinion popping in to say hi" situation as The Hive is for me.

 

So no, you can't pad every corner, especially for a SN teen who is going to be able to vote in a few years. Please chalk this one up to "valuable piece of information I shared with other parents" and focus on the future, not mistakes of the past.

 

I stole a candy bar when I was three and you might have peed your pants in kindergarten, but we still like each other, don't we?

Edited October 6, 2017 by Guest