Economic pain hits kids, too

WASHINGTON • Kerri Reddick-Morgan lives a solidly middle-class life. She has a master's degree, a good job as a marketing director for a nonprofit group and rents a nice townhouse in Woodbridge, Va. But as major investment banks and markets around the world have come unglued, she has had to reassure her anxious children that their world has not.

Ten-year-old Kamar is so worried that another Great Depression is coming that he thinks he might not have kids when he grows up, in case he can't find a job. And hearing about failing banks, 12-year-old Kaise wondered whether her baby-sitting money would disappear from her savings account. Time to explain FDIC insurance, Reddick-Morgan said.

"The only calming thing I could do was to tell her, ‘You don't have over $100,000 in your bank account, so your money is fine,'" she said. "That is not a conversation I thought I would ever be having with my 12-year-old."

Amid free-falling stocks, shrinking retirement and college savings plans and skyrocketing foreclosures, it's not just adults who have been seized with uncertainty recently.

A recent survey of 500 U.S. teenagers found that almost 70 percent feared an "immediate negative impact" on the security of their families. "That's a gigantic figure," said Michael Cohen, a research psychologist who runs the opinion-research firm that conducted the poll. "There's anxiety about this. And the anxiety is not just for the society at large, but for me and my family. I was quite taken aback by the scope of that fear."

And unless parents, who might be fearful, too, can help restore a child's sense of security, many might wind up with headaches or stomachaches or begin acting out or losing interest in school, child psychologists say.

Even children not in crisis "pick up the mood, the tension, the anxiety - there are no secrets in families," said Stanley Greenspan, professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University. "Younger kids tend to be all-or-nothing thinkers. So a healthy 8-year-old is more likely to worry in a more extreme way than an adult."

Greenspan, author of "The Secure Child," said that at times like these, parents need to spend more time with their children. They need to ask their children how much they know about what's going on, then answer questions in an age-appropriate way. They need to find ways for their children to help others. "If a child is active in helping make things better, there's less worry," Greenspan said.

No matter the financial situation, never lie to children, said Jerilyn Ross, director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington. One patient had just lost her job but was too ashamed to tell her two teen daughters. So when one daughter kept bugging her to buy new clothes and she refused, the girl felt angry and thought her mother was being unreasonable. "When the mom finally sat down and told her she couldn't afford the clothes because she'd lost her job, the daughter felt guilty, then wanted to help the mother," Ross said.

Reddick-Morgan has used the crisis to reinforce the importance of faith, family and education.

"The only thing that matters is who you are and how you treat people," she told them.

"Money. All these material things. You can't take it with you. You have to believe that no matter what happens, God is going to take care of us."