Reassuring kids is a job in itself

AFTER the trauma of her father's sudden job loss, nine year old Caitriona's parents asked her if she remembered what had happened, and whether she had been worried.

"Well, I thought we might have to go and live in a hut," she ventured, half joking, hall"not.

Few jobs are secure in the contract culture of the 1990s and thousands of families have to cope with the bitter blow of unemployment.

But how do you make sure the children feel secure when your own safety net has suddenly been snatched away and you fear you're in financial freefall? Do you tell them what's going on? Pretend nothing's happening? Involve them in discussions about family budget cuts?

Parents deal with a problem like this in very different ways. Former Sunday Press editor Michael Keane and his wife Jenny were candid, and as positive as they could be with their children, aged nine, 13, and 15 when the Press group of newspapers collapsed last year.

"I kept them informed at every stage as to what I was doing." The couple's children were worried. "One asked `Daddy, are you ever going to work again?' The insecurity was there."

The whole family breathed a sigh of relief when Michael got a job as corporate affairs director of PR firm Fleishman Hillard Saunders a little under a year later. "I'm proud of the way the children handled it" Michael says, and now that it's all over he believes it may have been a useful lesson to them about the harsh realities of today's job market.

Clare, with four children under the age of 13, opted not to tell her children when she lost her well paid job. "The kids didn't ask a whole lot, and we did try to keep it from them. I never really said I was out of a job and visiting Werburgh Street social welfare office on a regular basis. We let them know that financial circumstances had changed and that we couldn't afford stuff like the bicycle with the carbon fibre frame. But I think they still don't realise what happened.

Experts advise that parents be both honest and reassuring, a difficult trick perhaps in the early days of job loss, when you may be so panic stricken you can hardly think straight. But it is your job as a grown up to get a grip.

Nora Gibbons, senior social worker with Barnardos, says: "Our main advice to parents with older children, say aged 10 to 15, is to include them in major family happenings. You shouldn't burden them with parental issues, but if you decide not to tell them, they'll pick up the vibes anyway. And children, even 12 and 13 year olds, are very egocentric; if they don't know what's going on, they'll be inclined to blame themselves for problems in the family."

Job loss is a major stress. But even if loss of income leads to dramatic changes in a child's life - moving house, switching schools - he or she will probably cope if parents can reassure that they have a plan to cope with the situation.

Children may not like the new economic climate where £100 trainers and holidays in France may be ditched: But they will suffer serious insecurity only if parents are so stressed and upset that they are mentally or emotionally absent to their children - or if they burden children with responsibility for making decisions.

"Parents have to decide what the situation means for the family, and having made decisions, tell the children in ways that are calm," says Gibbons.

Senior lecturer in child psychiatry Dr Michael Fitzgerald says that anything that affects parents affects all their children, even the youngest, and you can't prevent a family stress like this from touching them.

"The child needs an explanation about what's going on, but parents shouldn't discuss it with their children every day; a discussion perhaps once a month won't burden the children and will give the kids a sense that their parents have things under control."

One thing not to do is to go into debt, acting as if nothing has changed. Children may be upset and angry if they have to go without things they take for granted, says Gibbons, and it's important to let them express that. And if you can't cope with hearing it, identify someone in the family, like a granny or an auntie, who can listen to them."