Theater of the Soul

First, I’m going to cover a few issues specifically related to children and emergencies. Any mother worthy of being called a mother is protective of her children. I know I am. I might even be accused of being overly protective of my kids. The difference between myself and many other over protective mothers that I know is the fact that I can temper those feelings with common sense. I know that freaking out during an emergency renders me completely useless to my children, whether that emergency is the child choking on a hot dog or bombs falling from the sky.

A while back, I posted a little story about a neighbor of mine TOTALLY losing it when her child was experiencing a medical emergency. She’s a wonderful mother most of the time, but completely failed her child when he needed her MOST. I am not that kind of mother, and in order to be of any use to your children in an emergency, YOU can’t be that kind of mother either.

Women typically don’t like thinking about those things. It makes us uncomfortable, so the natural reaction is just to stick our heads in the sand and NOT think about our worst fears. Then, when we find ourselves confronted with something fairly innocuous, such as a child choking on the hot dog (or in the case of my neighbor, seizures brought on by high fever), we TOTALLY freeze or freak out, because we just don’t know what to do.

The key lies in planning. And in order to plan, you need to face your worst fears. You need to visualize what YOUR actions are going to be in any given emergency. Unknown to me at the time, but I’ve always naturally done this by playing that ‘What If..?’ game in my head, usually when I hear or see things on tv that make me wonder what I would do in similar situations. You know when you’re sitting there watching a horror movie…a character hears a strange noise and immediately goes into the dark, spooky cellar to investigate…unarmed, no less…and you think to yourself, “What a fuckin idiot”? That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about. What would YOU do if you were in a similar situation? Okay, so maybe you’re smart enough to not to go into a dark basement when there’s a serial killer on the loose, but what would you do? Call 911? Arm yourself? Hide? Run?

Another thing that moms typically waste too much time on is worrying about their childrens’ psychological well-being. In a true emergency, you don’t have time to consider how deeply little Johnny is going to be affected by having to leave a favorite toy or pet behind. Have faith in the resiliency of children, grab the kid and GO.

I was at work when the apartment building I lived in caught on fire. My oldest son was two years old and with our babysitter, who lived downstairs from me. One of the other neighbors noticed smoke and started pounding on doors to wake people up. When my babysitter opened the door to the bedroom where my son was sleeping, one wall was completely burning. She did the smart thing…she grabbed my son and ran like hell, despite the fact that he was screaming for some Elmo doll he had been sleeping with.

I was a 45 minute drive away from home when I got the phone call. My sitter assured me that my son was fine…I could hear him screaming in the background…but any mom who has ever been in a similar situation knows that I wouldn’t be truly convinced that he was fine until I had him in my arms. I made that drive home in 20 minutes and when I finally tracked them down at the town hall, my son was visibly relieved to have his mommy back, but still whining for that Elmo doll. He whined for DAYS over the fucking thing…I didn’t think he’d ever get over it. His sitter was overcome with guilt at one point after listening to him whine over it. Of course, he DID get over it, but at the time I thought he’d be scarred for life. He’s 12 now and doesn’t even remember the doll, the fire or the living hell he made of my life for a week.

The bottom line is that in any emergency, the physical well being of your child(ren) takes priority over psychological well being.

One final thought about children. I read somewhere recently that, after 9/11, there was a study done of children and the effects that media coverage had on their perception of the situation. It was discovered that many young kids who were exposed to the repeated coverage of the planes striking the World Trade Center thought that hundreds of planes were crashing into hundreds of buildings all over the world. They didn’t realize that it was just two planes striking two buildings.

In a situation where death, chaos and carnage are just a tv channel away, it’s important to remember that it’s up to YOU to decide how much is enough for your kids. 24 hour news coverage is a blessing AND a curse…unfortunately, young children take everything at face value. Keep this in mind if you find yourself in the middle of a 9/11 or Katrina-esque emergency. A little information goes a very long way with kids. You can’t protect them from every bad thing in the world, but you can prevent them from being subjected to disturbing sounds and images over and over again.