Children are wiser than we think. I asked my 12-year-old daughter and some of her friends if they are still thinking about and talking about the World Trade Center tragedy – or if things were getting "back to normal." They thought about it for a while. Then one young girl said, "It's not yes or no. It's more like we're doing what we usually do but we know that things are different now." The others nodded solemnly and agreed.

"Things are different now." I couldn't sum it up better. The toppling of the World Trade Center towers and the plane crashes in Washington and Pennsylvania signaled the end of a kind of American innocence. Thousands of people murdered while going about their everyday lives? That happens somewhere else, doesn't it? It does – but now, it has happened here. And it can happen again.

How do we raise our children under these circumstances? How do we keep them safe in a world that we have discovered – in a new and chilling way – isn't guaranteed to be safe? How do we help them recover from this national trauma and build the inner resources to manage what the future holds?

Children Have Varying Needs

There are, of course, levels of fear. Children who witnessed the horror of the crashes; children who lost a loved family member or friend; children whose parents have been called up for military service; children whose parents are grieving the loss of someone they loved – these are the children most likely to suffer from trauma for some time to come. They require special care and support. A good resource for helping children cope with loss can be found at the Web site for the National Mental Health Association. If your child is showing signs of post-traumatic stress as outlined on this site, please consider referring your family to a local psychotherapist for help.

For this article, I'm choosing to talk about the vast majority of kids in our country who are perhaps deeply affected but not necessarily traumatized. These are the kids who watched the events of September 11th unfold on TV or who heard about it from anxious adults. They may see that the adults around them are still upset and sad. They may have a sense that "the world is different now" and be confused and frightened about what that means. What can we do to help them cope with a situation that we adults are also finding difficult to manage?

Tips for Helping Children Manage a Changed World

• Deal with your own feelings: We can't be anchors for our children if we haven't found a way to anchor ourselves. If you continue to feel overwhelming anger, fear, or sadness, be sure that you talk it out with friends, family and/or professionals. Find ways to ground yourself by doing such things as meditation, prayer, exercise, and helping others.
  
  
• Limit media exposure: My guess is that most adults were so unable to grasp the enormity of the situation that they needed to see it over and over again just to "get" that it really happened. The networks obliged by repeatedly playing the images of destruction throughout the day. But I'm concerned about the impact of this repetition on our children. Those countless TV replays created an indelible image in their brains. Most children can't cope with such images. Many developed nightmares.
  
  Think carefully about what and how much you let your children see. Most importantly, don't assume that they understand what they are seeing. Talk about it and give them some framework for making sense of it all.
  
  
• Make allowances for unusual behavior: Children, even teens, often don't have enough words to express their feelings about something as big and upsetting as a major tragedy. Instead, they act out. Expect and make allowances for irritability, irrational outbursts, over-reactions, and withdrawal. These changes in behavior are the way that your