THE MH17 disaster has been constantly in the news and social media since the event unfolded late last week.
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Each day since the Malaysia Airlines plane carrying almost 300 people was shot out of the sky over the Ukraine, the TV news, print media, Facebook and Twitter has been inundated with sad stories and horrific images.
These are images of loved ones whose lives have been cut tragically short, of young children and babies who had been on holidays with their families, of leading health experts heading to Australia for an international conference on AIDS.
These are images and stories which are hard to forget, and nor should we forget them.
The world needs to maintain the rage when it comes to finding out how and why this horrendous disaster occurred. That said, there has also been much said in the media about protecting our young children and teenagers from such images and stories, with one so-called Australian social media expert even tweeting the morning of the disaster that parents should not let their children watch television or read newspaper articles about the shooting down of MH17.
But why should we, as parents, wrap our children up in cotton wool and not inform them that bad things can happen to good people?
Yes, shelter them from truly horrific images ... that’s a given. But not telling your children about such disasters as MH17, 9/11 or the Bali bombings is dangerous.
If these young minds are protected from ever hearing about bad news, how will they learn to cope in the real world once they are older? How will they know what grief is? While we don’t want our children to be sad, grief is only a natural part of life.
Much like the children who have been protected from the concept of losing in sport, these children who are sheltered from hearing about “bad news” stories are in danger of growing up with a false sense of reality.
While, as parents, we put helmets on our children’s head to protect them from harm if they fall off a bike, sheltering them from the truth about the world is actually doing more harm than good.