Its just unbelievable!
I live near the Seattle area of Washington State. We have been expecting “The Big One” for many years now. What shook Japan, could very well and probably will shake here someday. Such an unnerving feeling, imaging preparing for something like that, not knowing when it will hit, but knowing that it will.
-So what do we do?
We don’t prepare.
Its like I’m telling myself, if we don’t talk about it, don’t make a plan, or prepare, it won’t happen. But I know this to be untrue. I feel like I might jinks it, and how awful is that?
While I was out this morning, Angelina was watching the news with Daddy. She asked me if Daddy called to tell me what happened in Japan? She said there was an explosion and lots of water crashing boats cars and buildings.
*Update: Turns out she was watching coverage at Grandma and Papa’s house yesterday.
I was forced to have a short conversation about what happened.
Earthquake under the ocean floor, shook the ground, made the water go “crazy.”
-Tried to keep it on a 5year old level.
I told her that we need to keep those people in our thoughts and prayers, lots of people are hurt and don’t have a house now.
“Why…did someone take it?”
-No, when the ground shook it made if all down, cracked the house.
“Oh that’s ok, Phineas and Ferb will drive there to fix it!”
(Which was yes the cartoon she was watching at the time of this conversation.
So at that point I ended the discussion, but I know deep down I need to talk to her more about this. Not so much as what happened and is happening in Japan, but more so what could happen here.
But this is where I’m torn. I want to share with her, but not share too much. I don’t want her to be scared about it happening here, I want her to not worry. And to keep me from worrying as well.
I think we will take the next couple of weeks and slowly dabble in the much need conversation, and most importantly fill the tub we have for our emergency earthquake kit, which embarrassingly is empty at the moment.
I know a lot of people that read this blog aren’t local to me, but if you are…are you prepared? How did you teach your child(ren) about Earthquakes and not scare them?
And if you aren’t local…how did you prepare for other disasters, ie…Hurricanes, Tornadoes, ect.?
In the summer we were hit with a tornado here in new york which never happens, sophia and I were at my job getting ready to leavd when it happened. All I can say is it was scary! As scared as I was I cud only imagine how terrified she must have been. I had a hard time trying to explain that to her and I just answered any questions she had as simply and as to the point as I cud without sugarcoating it too much. With this terrible thing going on japan made it even harder for me to explain that these things sometimes just happen just like it rains and snows. The most difficult part of it is that my best friends little brother who she calls her uncle is in the navy stationed out in japan. She had a hard time understandimg why we couldnt just call him. Its hard having to talk to them about not so happy things but I think our jobs as moms is not to shield them from everything thats going on but to educate them and answer any questions they have. They are much smarter and very capable of understanding these things than we realize. Our babies from from our bz days are not quite babies anymore =)
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