Twitter is awash with jokes about Hawaii and the missile false alarm.
One can understand why. When a person tries to regroup from a near trauma, they go to comedy to help them manage the shock.
But there is one section of the population that wont want to make light of this episode – young children. The kind that I teach in Primary school.
They wont get the humor and will be perplexed (and often wounded) by the story if it isn’t explained in a discrete and careful manner. The worst thing in the world a parent could do is make light of it or laugh it off. That wont work for children.
The best way to deal with it is to explain that sometimes adults believe things that make no sense. That a missile is never going to hit Hawaii and adults were so surprised by the message that they lost all common sense.
But isn’t that lying?
I feel that this white lie is imperative. Children must have it reinforced that their homes are not going to be pelted with missiles. Not now. Not ever.
Jokes will enable adults to move on.
I worry about the children.
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Tags: ballistic missile, Education, Explaining Hawaii false alarm to children, Explaining Hawaii missile to children and kids, Explaining hawaii to children, Hawaii missile, Hawaii missile false alarm, missile alert hawaii, Parenting, Parents
Topical Teaching 
January 15, 2018 at 3:29 am |
So true.