How can a family prepare for a crisis situation and alleviate stress?
When a family is in a crisis, the interesting thing is that the parents and kids cope with it differently. When parents go through a crisis, they tend to want to be alone. They want to think about it. They kind of pull away.
When children are in a crisis, they want to be closer to their parents. Especially very young children, so you can see there is kind of a conflict there. But I tell all families it’s important for you to try to take some time to talk about the crisis and talk about problem solving that crisis.
In the "Common Sense Parenting" book, we talk about a method we call the SODAS method where you would go through certain steps to try to solve problems together as a family. Then the family knows they can always come together to solve whatever problem they come up against. If it turns out they can't solve it themselves, they should reach out to a professional to help.
