Experiencing Stress as a child
Earlier this year on June 27, 2011 in the small city of Minot ND there was a massive flood effecting most of the school buildings within the town. Below is a link to their website with additional links to pictures and video on the town’s dedication to rebuilding the city. Within 15 miles away from the city is a military base. Not all military families live on base; a majority of the families had houses within the small city of Minot. So many people and military families were affected by the flooding. Within the city of Minot there was a need of shelter, clean water to use for drinking and eating, and a need for children to learn. The flooding affected the military base too. Even the water was not safe to drink or use because it was contaminated from the flooding within the city. Working on the base at one of the child care facilities there was a base wide order to boil the water before drinking or using it to prepare meals for the youth. The contaminated water affected the water lines. At the time I worked with children as young as 5 years old. This happened to be summer vacation for most of the youth. Their stresses began with just transitioning from the child development center to a School Age Program, making the transitioning from maybe staying at home to beginning kindergarten and starting to make connections of having more choices at the program or what’s sort of normal for children of military families are dual service families (meaning mom and dad are both in the military) and handling a situation where one parent or both parents getting deployed. If these transitioning situations wasn’t enough what added to this was the realization that some of the children that lived in a house in town lost their homes and all of their belongings. I saw a major change in the behaviors of these children in frustration such as: being clingy, defiant, destructive, some sad, unhappy and uncontrollable. I believe this is partly because when flooding happens it is an event that even adults have no control over, I knew it was a very tough time for them and their behaviors became a difficult time for the parents and caregivers. These children would ask questions such as “Why did my house get flooded?” and other children that lived on base would ask “What does flooding mean?” I housed one of my co-workers who lost his house. He slept in my 4 year old daughter’s room. She was asking questions about why he was staying with us and I did my best to explain it to her why. This was a difficult time for everyone here and because of the flooding school started later. Even now some of these families are still struggling, winter is here and these families are living in trailers, hotel rooms, staying with other family friends’ houses that are located miles away from town. I even witness families that made a choice of not staying in the state and decided to move away to other place. I also know a family that flew their children to a relative’s house to stay for w while because the children could not stay with the military parent because they lost their house in the flood and one parent were being deployed.
Nearly after the flooding the children participated in a “Masters of Disasters” Program” That taught the kids what to do in case a natural disaster happens where they live for example: fire safety, storm and tornado safety tips and how to prepare a disaster survival kit. On the other side of the program as a caregiver looking after the kids during the summer program the only thing that we could do in this situation was to provide fun activities for the children at the program so they would have a mindset that when they attend our program they feel safe and know this is a place where they can play.
When participating in researching on natural disasters for children living in china and japan I came across a slide show from the Roland Catellier Disasters Relief Foundation titled “We’ve got a New Project” written and posted around the same day flooding was happening in the city of Minot. They are in the process of rebuilding their small town as well. I found similarities within Minot and China/Japan, with water shortages, floor plans for new homes, and ideas for placement for children attending schools.
Links:
The first two link is to the flooding rebuilding of the city of Minot
Before the flooding and after the flooding pictures of Minot
The last link is to Disaster Reflief Foundations and pictures and information on disasters in china and japan.
4 comments:
Ms. Jay,
What a heartfelt post! How saddening for the people living in that town! My heart goes out to you all.
Stress can come from many different factors. As a result, children are not able to function when they are stressed. This is an excellent post and it shows how environmental conditions can stress children.
You talk about a master disaster plan put into place so children and caregivers are prepared for disasters. We also have a plan in place for things such as bomb threats, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes, etc. Each of our classrooms have a kit that include food, flashlights, water, etc. incase of such a disaster. We also practice for these emergencies with the children and have emergency evacuation places where we are designated to go if we need to leave our building. Being prepared and having a plan can minimize some stressful situations.
I agree that this is a great post and definitely shows how stress can affect anyone at anytime. I too am military but have not had a natural disaster truly happen to the point where it affected my state of living. I can only imagine the added stress being a child of the family. Thank you for sharing such a heartfelt story.
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