Stories in the news have never affected me as much as they do now that I'm a parent. I see stories that involve children or pets or parents and i just get heart sick and kind of panic attacky. In the last week, there was three stories that got pretty big publicity in my area involving children and it makes me dread watching the news or getting the news updates on my phone. My family was discussing one of the stories post dinner on Sunday and i literally had to leave the room I was getting so upset. Am I weird? Does this happen to anyone else?
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I totally do the same. As a parent, it all just hits so much closer to home.
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At first, yes, I had this problem, but I've since calmed down a lot, especially since a lot of what is reported on the news is not random acts against kids, it's an estranged parent kidnapping etc.
What I still have trouble with though, is school/mall/movie theater shootings.
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Its so weird because i want to know what happen and then i find out and i immediately regret that decision.
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@looch: these were not kidnapping, these were horrible, preventable deaths that make me sad to live in a society where they can happen - one of which was sadly on my own street
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@Chillybear: I guess it depends on the context for me, were they random, or was it done by people they knew, etc?
I worry a lot about random acts.
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@looch: Last week on our street a 9 yr old girl got hit by a car and was killed as she was trying to cross it with her babysitter. - this makes me want to move immediately. We had so many issues with people driving fast on our street and horrible accidents. The one i couldnt listen to details about on sunday was a three year old that was beaten and abused to death by his parents because he wouldnt eat his breakfast and about an hour ago i got an alert about a 15 month old drowning in his in-home daycare's fish pond in a town nearby. They just make my heart hurt and i feel so helpless. I cant even process what their families are going through if i'm this affected by these stories.
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@Chillybear: The one about the 3 year old made me cry. I can't do stories like that anymore. I have also had to either leave the room or ask people to stop talking about it. I just can't now that I have a little one.
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@Chillybear: I can say that I probably felt the same as you, especially on the crossing the road...I feel like cars speed down my street all the time as well. It only takes a second, you know?
I am very detached from the stories I hear on the news, othwerwise, I wouldn't be able to go on. Yes, it's tragic and heartbreaking, but what else are we supposed to do?
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I used to check the local news website every morning, but reading stories about crimes committed against children were very upsetting to me that I had to stop visiting the website. I want to keep up with current events, but it would bother me to the point of losing sleep.
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Yes, this is me exactly. It is so hard for me to read and absorb those types of news stories. I'm always freaked out and imagining my kids getting hit by cars - the one you mentioned about the 9 year old reminds me of what happened to the 3 year old boy related to #redballoonsforryan.
When I read that story about the little boy who died at daycare from a 5 lb weighted blanket, or the kids who passed away from enterovirus, or any news stories related to young innocent children and death I can't handle it. It hurts my heart so much, and I can only imagine what their families must be going through. I feel like the stakes are so much higher now as a mom. Even when I found out about sammyfab, I cried even though I hardly knew her. I just imagined myself in her shoes thinking, my gosh... to know you're terminally ill and never going to hold your baby boy again. Never going to see his sweet face or kiss his sweet cheeks again. And to leave behind a son without a mother. Or the story about the Canadian single father who died and left behind his son. All these kinds of stories break my heart.
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@Chillybear: there are studies that show that listening/watching the news daily increases anxiety. I am guilty of always listening to the news on my drive after dropping my daughter off, but lately have been trying to only check in every other day or so. And yes- hearing about this stuff is so, so much harder now that I have a child. I'm a therapist in a jail, so I hear the stories in first person a lot which is sometimes nearly unbearable. And still we go on.
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