HELP YOUR KIDS IN A CRISIS

With the Ukraine invasion raging, Covid lurking and cost-of-living pressures rising young people are picking up anxieties from social media and school. Here's how to help them cope with what's going on

- GABY HINSLIFF

WHEN John Adams and his two daughters settled down to watch a family film, he wasn't expecting questions about bombing raids. But as they discussed what to watch, he spotted 12-year-old Helen scrolling through YouTube, looking for clips of air-raid sirens. She wanted to know what it would sound like if the worst came to the worst.

"The question this morning at breakfast was, 'What are we meant to do if there's a nuclear attack?'” says John, a stay-at-home dad from Surrey in the UK, who runs the parenting blog DadBlogUK.

Over dinner or on the school run, and in those raw moments just before lights out, when children often disclose what's actually troubling them, many parents now face questions they're struggling to answer.

A primary school teacher friend spent last week soothing pupils who were panicking that a bomb was about to drop on them.

Another father I know was floored by questions about whether he'd be called up in the event of a world war.

A pandemic that led to rising mental health problems among young people has left many parents wondering about the impact of living through seemingly apocalyptic times.

Books on helping children manage their emotions are shooting up Amazon rankings. On the online forum Mumsnet, a mother questioning whether her daughter's teachers should've talked to the class of seven-year-olds and eight-year-olds about Ukrainians “having to leave the country with their pets for fear of being shot by Russians” triggered a lengthy debate. The consensus was that it was already the talk of the playground.