Knowledge centre Anxiety & Stress in youth behind the scenes at Jeugdjournaal
On Thursday 17 October, Marieke Bos and Anika Bexkens went behind the scenes at the Jeugdjournaal, a Dutch television program that delivers news specifically for children. They talked to the editors-in-chief of Jeugdjournaal about what kind of questions they receive from children and advised how to answer them.
The Knowledge centre Anxiety & Stress in youth supports children, young people and everyone involved in their education and development in dealing with anxiety and stress. Jeugdjournaal regularly receives questions from children, which can be about all sorts of topics. Interestingly, many of these questions are about the risk of war or natural disasters in the Netherlands. An example is: ‘I am afraid of the possibility of war in the Netherlands. How likely is it that Putin will throw a bomb on Rotterdam?’
Marieke Bos and Anika Bexkens visited the Jeugdjournaal to advise the editors-in-chief on how best to deal with these kinds of questions from children. Their main advice? Take children's fears seriously. Jeugdjournaal can help by supporting children in evaluating how realistic their fears actually are. After all, children often make big jumps in their minds, for example from the climate crisis to the direct impact on their daily lives. However, the chances of this happening are not always as high as they think. A piece of advice, therefore, is to give children a sense of control by helping them understand and put things into perspective.