Talking to Kids About the Tsunami Tragedy

Dec. 31, 2004 -- -- The images of the lost blond, blue-eyed boy sobbing disconsolately in a Thai hospital bed, his face marked with scratches and mosquito bites, were beamed across the world and quickly came to personify an almost incomprehensible tragedy.

A day after the killer tsunami wrenched Hannes Bergstroem from his parents during a family vacation, the 2-year-old Swedish boy came to embody a distressing fact of the Asian disaster: children are the hardest-hit age group in the current crisis. Not only did children account for an estimated one-third of those killed in the earthquake-induced tsunamis, but many of those who survived may have been orphaned.

As wrenching as the images of little bodies in mass graves and sobbing parents clinging to their dead children were for adults, experts say that for children, viewing the footage can be a frightening and confusing experience.

"Children can identify easier with people their own age," said Robert Butterworth, a psychologist at the Los Angeles-based International Trauma Associates. "When a story is too vast, the individual stories that are closer to them become more comprehensible."

Children across the United States are aware of the Asian calamity and its aftermath. The deadly waves engulfed coastlines the day after Christmas, and the stories of the ensuing humanitarian crisis have been unfolding during the Christmas holidays, when children could be exposed to more daytime television viewing than during school days.

"Teachers are often in a good position to discuss a current event in school," said Butterworth. "But this time, it's a sort of unique situation since kids are not in school, so parents can't sit back and expect teachers to handle it."

For parents, a pressing issue is whether to discuss the Asian tragedy with their kids and how best to do it.