Talking with your kids about Hamas conflict
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI)-Talking to your kids about hard topics can be difficult and sometimes uncomfortable. Many parents say they want their kids to come to them when they have questions or concerns with hard topics. Such is what is happening in Israel and threats from Hamas.
Dr. Matthew Larsen a therapist at Ascend Mental Health, says letting your kids come to you is good. But reminding them that they can come to you is just as important.
"You can wait until they ask, but you give little feelers. You check, you say, Hey, did you guys hear about the school district cutting off YouTube, YouTube, kids for the weekend? Do you know why they did it? Do you want to know? So the kids know you're willing to talk about it.," Dr. Larsen said.
A pastor Alipio Amaral at the local church called the Gathering shared with his congregation that comforting your children through the parents and child's shared faith can be a big help.
"I have a son, a seven year old, and we were talking about this this morning that, you know, there are people dying presently, and many of them of the 1300 Jews, Israelis that have been killed and the 1900 Palestinians that have been killed," said Alipio Amaral.
Dr. Larsen shared how by relating hard topics with something the child already knows helps them understand the topic a lot better.
"Everyone's got a parent, an aunt, an uncle who cares deeply about something political or a sports team. The comparative leaders trivial, but they care deeply about it. And you can ask how upset do they get when it goes bad? How upset do they get when something they care about is threatened? How angry? How scared? You say it's similar. It's just bigger. That's on a different level. And so people when they're that level of scared, are willing to do terrible things," said Dr. Larsen.
Idaho Falls School district recently sent out a note before the weekend informing parents about how they were blocking Youtube on school devices. For more coverage on this past story you can go here.
Included in the it is a link that will have more resources available for parents. But you can also find that link here.
