Dear Kerry,
My 7 year old is way too scared of tornadoes and thunderstorms. We live where there are sometimes a few storms, but the recent bad weather in other parts of the country has made him worry more. How can I help him get this in perspective?
—JL, Indiana

Dear JL,
How scary for your little boy and frustrating for you that his fear is so intense that it stops him from hearing any reassurance! It could even make it hard to enjoy the prospect of the summer, when there will be more storms.

I think you’re on the right track with the idea of helping him get some perspective on the situation. We can think of a few ways to work on this problem.

Most important is how he sees you and other family members handle the prospect of storms. If grownups are frightened, it’s hard for children to feel secure.

But being scared isn’t the same as acknowledging the reality that storms can be dangerous. He needs you to take tornadoes seriously. It’s confusing to children if grownups disregard warning sirens. What matters is that he sees that you know what to do to keep him and the rest of the family safe.

Perhaps the first thing to do is for the grownups in the family to have a severe weather plan and prepare for the possibility of bad storms in the summer season.

That means having a safe place to take shelter. It’s useful to stock it with some water and some snacks, plus a flashlight, weather radio and some warm clothes. Kids will need books and toys to pass the time, since warnings sometimes last for hours.

You can ask your son to help you stock the safe place, choosing the snacks and toys. You can explain to him how a room or space away from windows, near supporting walls, will keep you all safe. These are standard ideas (there are more detailed ones on the U.S. Weather Service website), but the point is to involve your son, so that he feels like there is something active he can do, that he’s not just helpless.

The internal part of his fear probably comes from the fact that he does feel so helpless in the face of the potentially destructive force of the storm. He has seen pictures of destroyed houses and heard about deaths. These relate to the most basic fears all children grapple with — grownups do too.

So it may also help to share with him that you are upset and sad when you see the bad things that can happen. Then you can go on to talk about how no one can control the weather; it goes in the bucket of what no one is in charge of, when you talk about the three buckets (what children are in charge of, what grownups are in charge of, and what no one is).

But he can be in charge of strengthening his emotional muscle of accepting that reality and working to do what he can do. Being brave is something that everyone aspires to and can work on.

Your son is not alone in his fear. Many young children worry about storms, for all the real reasons we’ve already talked about. But their worry is often exacerbated by an internal conflict.

Young schoolchildren have a conscience that makes them feel bad when they do something wrong, sometimes when they even have a wish they know isn’t nice, especially an angry one. That’s an uncomfortable feeling, so they sometimes take the storm that’s going on inside and dump it out into the world.

Then a real storm comes along and confirms how dangerous those stormy feelings are! No wonder a kid gets extra scared — he may need your help to take his own angry feelings back inside, and your reassurance that his feelings can’t actually make anything bad happen. Tornadoes are no one’s fault.

Let’s hope that you have a safe summer that is also the one in which your son masters his fear.

Kerry Kelly Novick is a local child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst, and author, with Jack Novick, of "Emotional Muscle: Strong Parents, Strong Children," available at amazon.com or through http://www.buildemotionalmuscle.com. Check the website regularly for blogs and news of upcoming media appearances and events. She welcomes your email with comments and questions for future columns at kerrynovick@gmail.com.