What to Do When the News Scares You A Kid`s Guide to Understanding Current Events

This latest installment in the bestselling What To Do series tackles children’s feelings of anxiety around current events and what is portrayed in the news. Scary news is an inevitable part of life. This book can support and guide efforts to help scary news seem a bit more manageable for young people. 

Whether from television news reports, the car radio, digital media, or adult discussions, children are often bombarded with information about the world around them. When the events being described include violence, extreme weather events, a disease outbreak, or discussions of more dispersed threats such as climate change, children may become frightened and overwhelmed. Parents and caregivers can be prepared to help them understand and process the messages around them by using this book.

What to Do When the News Scares You provides a way to help children put scary events into perspective. And, if children start to worry or become anxious about things they’ve heard, there are ideas to help them calm down and cope. This book also helps children identify reporters’ efforts to add excitement to the story which may also make threats seem more imminent, universal, and extreme.

Read and complete the activities in What to Do When the News Scares You with your child to help them to understand the news in context—who, what, where, when, how—as a means of introducing a sense of perspective.

 Also available in Spanish Qué Hacer Cuando las Noticias te Asustan: Guía para Niños para Entender las Noticias Actuales

Jacqueline B. Toner, PhD is a clinical psychologist with over 30 years in private practice working with children and parents. She earned her PhD from University of Virginia and serves as Chief Facilitator for a medical resources project with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Toner has co-authored books with Claire A. B. Freeland, PhD, including the What to Do Series for Kids as well as  Depression: A Teen's Guide to Survive and Thrive and Yes I Can: A Girl and Her Wheelchair. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Visit jacquelinetoner.net.

Janet McDonnell is a writer and illustrator whose characters populate many books and magazines for children. She has both taught and written for children from preschool to high school. She lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Visit janetmcdonnell.com, @McDonnellDoodle on Twitter, and @JanetMcDonnellIllo on Instagram.