Words by: Georgina Guedes. Article from the April 2015 issue of Ride Magazine.
Every parent wants their child to feel safe. Unfortunately, living in South Africa, crime is a daily reality. Striking the balance between teaching your children to be safe and not making them scared, can be tough to achieve. Here’s how to approach it.
It’s every mother’s worst nightmare – a hijacking when her child is in the car. For Veronica, when a van pulled into her driveway behind her and four armed men approached her, her first thought was to get help as quickly as possible, so she screamed loudly for her domestic worker to push the panic button.
“I did everything wrong,” she says. “I streamed for Glenda to push the panic button and I ran towards the house. My son was in the car. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Although this behaviour goes against all the ‘be calm and cooperative’ advice that South Africans are usually given, in this case, Veronica believes it saved her from a far worse fate. The men allowed her to take her two-year-old son out of his car seat, and then they took her bag and left.
They could easily have also taken her car, but she believes that their intention was to hold her up inside her house. Once she’d made a fuss and the security company was on its way, the thieves made their escape.
In the days after their ordeal, Veronica’s son Etienne refused to go to her, preferring his father. He also displayed classic post-traumatic symptoms for a small child, physically lashing out at those around him. Veronica was seeing a therapist anyway, so she asked her how to deal with it. Her therapist explained that she had to talk to Etienne about it, and reassure him about their safety.
“We explained that the bad men didn’t want to hurt us, they only wanted the borrowed car that I was driving while mine was in the shop. We told him that they didn’t want my normal car.”
Etienne accepted this and told Veronica that the bad men had taken her rose bag. “He had seen everything that happened, and we’d just not spoken about it,” she says. “He needed reassurance; but it just seemed like he was a baby and didn’t understand. After that, he was fine.”
Reassure, don’t terrify
According to Johannesburg- based educational psychologist Ruth Ancer, when dealing with children’s fears either after a bad experience, or when they become aware of the possibility of crime, it’s important not to build on their fears in an attempt to allay them.
“Make them aware of the need for security, without making them paranoid,” she says. “Tell them that this will keep us safe, or we just want to be sure.”
With children’s enquiring minds, chances are that you’ll get a barrage of questions about “safe from who?” Ruth says that it’s very important to only give them as much information as they already have. “Ask what they think, and agree or clarify with explanations of things that they have already experienced – like a story about someone’s bicycle getting stolen.”
Also, if they come to you with questions about things that they’ve heard, Ruth advises always asking more questions to get a sense of the root of their concerns. “Ask ‘why are you worried about that?’ and then only reassure them about their specific worries,” she says.
It is, however, important not to be dishonest when offering reassurance, because in the unfortunate event that something does happen, they need to be able to trust your subsequent reassurance. “So, when I’m asked whether the baddies could get in after I’ve locked the security gate, I tell my children it would be difficult and they’d make a noise, which would give us a lot of time to call the security company,” she says.
It’s important not to build on their fears in an attempt to allay them.
If something does happen, it’s important to show them that you have taken steps to protect both of you in future. Explain to them how you are being careful, or show them the new security system.
What about you?
Of course, allaying your child’s fears is only one part of the puzzle. If you have been through a bad crime experience, you also have to address your own emotional state. Trauma therapy is routinely prescribed for people who have been through a frightening and threatening experience, but Ruth says that this isn’t always the best option.
“There are some outdated modes of trauma counselling that encourage the victim to relive the trauma; but if the patient is coping with the trauma, reliving it might well repeat the trauma rather than bringing about relief.”
This is especially true for small children, and Ruth believes that trauma counselling or some other type of therapy may only be necessary if the parent feels that they’re unable to reassure their child or make them feel secure.
“Children are more traumatised by a traumatised parent,” she says. “They need to feel that their parent is contained and calm. If you feel that you’re not coping or you can’t talk to them in a way that is helpful, then you should contact FAMSA or a social worker or therapist.”
It took Victoria a little longer than Etienne to recover, and she is now hyper-vigilant when she arrives at and leaves her house. She also has recurrences of fear, which she believes are related to the attempted hold-up. “When the burglar alarm went faulty, I overreacted with complete terror, and raged at the fact that I don’t feel safe in my own home,” she says.
She continues to talk about the experience with her therapist, and feels that she has her fears mostly under control.
There’s a fine balance in teaching children to be aware of the dangers in the world and allowing them to feel secure and carefree. By offering them age-appropriate information but reassuring them about their own safety, it’s possible to achieve both.
Talking about stranger danger
Most parents try to make their children aware of the dangers of accepting gifts or going away with unknown people, but are often floored when asked, “But what would the stranger do to us?”
Psychologist Ruth Ancer says that in the same way as you educate your children about the danger to your property from crime, it’s important to educate them about themselves and their bodies, without filling them with terror about the outcomes.
“With small children, it’s better to say something like ‘Well, because they’re strangers, we’re not sure what they might do, so it’s better to just stay with people you know,’ instead of introducing them to a whole new world of very dark fears.”
However, she points out that so-called ‘stranger danger’ is often overstated at the expense of education about sexual predators who are in fact more often someone that the child knows. “It’s better to teach them about the privacy of their own bodies and that if anyone – no matter who – ever does anything that makes them uncomfortable, they should tell their parents or a teacher right away.”
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