During New Year’s Eve, it is expected that the night sky will be filled with colorful and loud rockets and fireworks – which for many can be a joy. But for the smaller ones, it can be rather unpleasant and not nearly as fun.
As a parent, you want the best for your child. Therefore, have News24 contacted the psychologist Mathias Ortlieb to discuss how as a mother or father you can lay the foundations for a New Year’s Eve without fear of fireworks for your child.
How to talk to your scared child about fireworks
We all have different sensitivities when it comes to light and sound. Mathias Ortlieb believes that a New Year’s Eve marked by fireworks can be extra sensitive for children with neuropsychiatric obstacles such as autism or ADHD.
– Then it is so that, depending on how difficult it is, you can probably wear earplugs. One prepares with some type of adaptation or aid. Then it is very important to talk before the New Year about what will happen. You can watch videos on YouTube, for example, so you can see roughly how it will go.
Best tricks for a child with a fear of fireworks
Mathias believes that it is especially important to prepare if the child has been involved in loud banging before and got scared because of it. It may be that the child fled to Sweden and was previously affected by war, weapons or explosions and that fireworks can thus remind of such situations.
– It’s unpredictable because you don’t know when or how loud it will hit. By its nature, it is a very potent thing to create fears that can connect to different situations.
To prevent the fireworks from becoming a nuisance, there are a few tricks to use, according to Mathias:
– Talk, show films, find ways to reduce the noise where you live. Depending on how severe the fear is, and in combination with a disability, it can be good to have a safe and cozy place in the home that you fix up where you can be together with a parent if things get difficult, concludes Mathias in the interview with News24.