In this video, we will show you how to

apply psychological first aid to kids between

six and nine years old. This stage is characterized by
a bigger cognitive maturity. This bigger maturity helps them
understanding many things that a smaller kid, of 3 or 4
years old, can't understand. But it is important that we know that they
still don't have an adult's maturity and so, in this stage they understand
more things, but not everything. Kids are especially vulnerable
to misunderstanding information, to fantasizing,
to getting a piece of what someone told them and putting it together
with another piece and building an image of what happened that
doesn't fit reality. But at the same time, at this age
kids are very receptive and they get the contradictions. If kids with two or three
years old
are relatively easy to calm down because with our
attitude and our non-verbal language they will trust us
more easily, when they grow older they will find out where we are contradicting
ourselves, when we are telling them nothing happens but we move as if
something really serious was happening. How is the death concept between
six and nine years old? Well, most of the kids this age have already
understood that death happens. And they have also understood
they are irreversible, that the dead person or
animal won't come back. So they can understand
quite exactly that death affects everyone and it's a
process from which we can't come back. They still aren't aware that they
will already die someday. But they have the idea that the people
around them will probably die. And this is the age where kids
that have had contact with death begin to worry about,
"Will you also die, mum?" "Dad, will you also die?" And this will give us an extra
difficulty
to the management of the critical incident we are living with
our kids in our family. How does a critical incident,
with or without a death, but with a high stress moment,
to kids with 6-9 years old? Well, on one side it causes important
behavior changes to them. In example, they might lose the
autonomy they had already won, they might be unsettled and they might
be extraordinarily irritable. If this happens we must understand
they are the normal reactions to an event that isn't
usual, that is extraordinary and that has both kids and
adults scared and stressed. We might also probably
see changes in the kids' usual communication
patterns. Either because a communicative
boy or girl suddenly fall into a silence that
isn't usual in them and we see how they withdraw
and don't want to talk. Or it might happen the contrary,
because he can't stop thinking of what happened and he constantly wants
to talk and have info on what happened. And although it is true that giving some
information is important
inside the critical accident management and it is a part of the application
of psychological first aid, if they require too much information we will
also have to correct it to try to give it the appropriate direction, which is some
information
but without an excess of information. It is very usual that after a critical
incident a general fear appears. Fear of being alone, fear of going to places we
know or unknown places
and mostly fear of being away from the main carer,
which are usually the parents, but which also could
be other people. These last fears are related
to what we just said: as he is aware that all
living things die, the kid that has been in
contact with death or with death risk, begins being
aware that he can lose the people he love and so
these fears increase. We must be aware of these fears
but we must also be able to manage them so that they don't
condition the kid's behavior, because if we give it too
much importance somehow we are telling the kid
his fear is proved. We can also see, as it
happens with adults, reiterated thoughts on what
happened, that is, a boy, a girl who keeps remembering what
happened and even recreates it. A house destruction, a car crash
or a loved one's death. Inside the first four to six weeks
this kind of reactions are totally understandable, adaptive and
help the kid processing what happened. If they extend too much, maybe we will need
to ask
or go to a professional. And finally, it is usual to
see that kids in these ages have sleeping problems after
a critical incident. Usually these problems are
nightmares and difficulties to sleep. But in some isolated cases we
can also detect hypersomnia, which is sleeping more
than he did before. Which are the steps we must apply
in psychological first aid of kids in this age range. Well, they are the same you
have
previously seen in videos. Contain, calm down, inform, normalize and comfort. We
will now try to give you
some examples and processes with which we can execute these
tasks with kids with this age. Let's begin with how can we contain the kids'
emotions after
a critical incident. The important thing is trying
to prevent the kids' emotions, fears and feelings
to overflow. And how can we do this? Well, we will try to create a
relaxed and quiet environment, we will gather and name
all the kid's emotions. In example, I see you are afraid,
I see you are frightened, I see you are sad, but we will
always try to refer to a thought that might calm
down this emotion. I see you are afraid,
but be aware that you are safe here, mum and
dad are protecting you, try to turn the intense emotions
into comforting thoughts. The second step, as you might
remember, is calming down the kid affected by a critical incident. How will we do
this? Well, we will try to talk slowly,
we will try to drive the conversation with the most tranquility we
can, which won't probably be complete, but we will try to low down our
activation tone and try to remind the kid this situation is
similar to one he previously lived and in which he could
get over his fears. In example, do you remember when
you fell down and we went to the hospital and they sew you up, and you were
really, really afraid and you cried a lot but then you calmed down because the
doctor told you to calm down? Well, what is happening today is
similar to that time and you will see how now you are really worried, but then
you will be able to calm yourself down. The resource of previously lived situations
helps kids, as well as
adults, activating their own confrontation mechanisms, and
this is highly positive. And something we will
never do in this stage is telling the kid that if he calms
down everything will be better. We won't because it probably
won't be true. If a kid just lost
his or her mother, the situation won't improve, no
matter how much he calms down. So we will tell him we
are there to help him calm down and to help him making
things as good as we can. Once we've done these two steps, which are containing and
calming down,
we will begin informing. The order is important, we will never
inform the kid if he isn't calmed down. In the informing step we
must speak with words the kid can understand taking into
account what we said before, that in this age often kids
understand almost everything but we must make sure they don't
misunderstand some information, because their cognitive level still
isn't the one of an adult, with these simple words we
must explain what happened. The shorter, easier and simpler
the explanation is, the safer the kid
will feel. In example, well, you know that this morning
dad drove to work, by car, well, in the middle of the morning,
the police called us and told us dad has had an accident. Next the kid will
obviously
ask if his father is OK or not and we will have to ask that he isn't,
that he is in the hospital and the doctors say he is seriously injured or whichever
information we must give. The more talk around, the more circumvents
we make on an information, the harder and menacing
it becomes to a kid. So it is good that we try to
be simple, as we, as adults, are afraid of what we
must tell the kid, if news are bad it won't
be easy doing it. But putting too many complicated
words won't help the kid, as we are informing him. The next step is normalizing,
which means authorizing the kid to externalize what he
is feeling in that moment. Rage, fear, sadness,
incredulity, and we will normalize all his emotions,
as in earlier ages, a very important part in our intervention
here applying psychological first aid is giving names to
the feelings the kid has. Once we've given the names, we can tell him that what's
happening is totally logic, given the incident he's living and
that probably after some hours and days these emotions will
become other things. It is very important that you don't
tell the kid they will improve, because it is highly possible that if what
happened is really serious the emotions won't improve, they will transform. In this
sense I remark
that it is specially important being able to tell
the kid we will be there to help and that we will surely be able
to promise that in a few days he won't be as scared as now, but
he will still be sad. And in the last step what we
must do is comforting the kid, which probably is living or
is realizing he is living a loss and this loss is beginning
to get to his rational perception. This is the loss of safety, either the loss of
an
object or of a person. This process of realizing about what
has happened is a gradual process, and our comfort must be
present for a long time. But it is important to always
finish the story with the promise we will be there to help
him feeling as good as we can. Again, I won't stop remarking it,
don't tell him he will feel OK. Tell him you will be there to make
him feel as good as you can. We will finish the video with two
advices, like the previous two. The first is that each kid makes his own process,
with his own characteristics and
each kid needs its own time. And each situation and
family is different. So there are many
possible reactions, many possible ways to react
and most of them, although they might be hard, will
be absolutely adaptive. We just need that if you see any
reaction in your son, daughter or any of the kids you are working with and to
which you have applied psychological first aid doesn't correspond to the pattern of
what we have described, ask for help. He won't probably need a therapy, he probably
just needs an idea of how to
confront better, how to explain better, how to normalize any input,
and contribution that will allow both the adult and the kid
manage the situation better. But don't have doubts. If you apply psychological
first aid encourage people to ask for professional orientation. If you are a
relative and you are applying
it to someone in your own family, I recommend you the same. If you have doubts,
ask,
because the calmer and quieter you are, the more you
will help the kids of this age.