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CNN SUNDAY MORNING
Interview With Tony Levitas
Aired July 21, 2002 - 07:12 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now that I'm in a full-scale DefCon one parental panic, let's try to talk -- get me talked down off the ledge here. Joining us to talk a little bit about what you say to your children, and for that matter, how to make a parent feel good is Dr. Tony Levitas. He is a child and family psychologist. Good to have you with us Dr. Levitas.
DR. TONY LEVITAS, PSYCHOLOGIST: Good morning Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right, what we just saw there were some dramatic self-defense maneuvers that you could teach your child. I imagine trying to teach your children this could scare them to death. How do you draw the line?
LEVITAS: Well first of all, Miles, I think it's really important that we teach our children that most of the people that we know are good people. However, there are some evil people out there, and we need to be on the lookout for them.
O'BRIEN: Well all right, that sounds easy, but then when the child says, well what about these evil people? Who are the bad people? What do you say?
LEVITAS: Well we tell children that they have to remain aware and vigilant, not hyper vigilant, not be overly on guard, but pay attention to their surroundings, pay attention to any type of suspicious looking characters. Stay in contact with an adult.
O'BRIEN: OK, but in many cases you're dealing with children who are at age where they truly believe in boogey man and monsters, and if you tell them that they do, in fact, exist, you really bolster a lot of fears that they already have. You know, it sounds good, but I don't know that kids have a rheostat on this kind of thing.
LEVITAS: We need to reassure children and let them know we're going to do everything in our power to protect them.
O'BRIEN: Yes. Well tell us about what we should tell our children when they ask us about these sorts of events.
LEVITAS: Well depending on the age, younger children don't need to be watching the news and don't need to be aware of all the horrid details. But the older children, we can give them as much information as they can handle. They need to know that law enforcement is doing their best to track down people like this, that -- and again, that we're going to protect kids as much as we can.
O'BRIEN: So would you recommend at any point either varnishing things over or just outright lying to your child and saying it's OK?
LEVITAS: No, not the older ones because they're going to hear it through their friends or on the media, some other way, so we do need to be honest with them. We need to keep the lines of communication open so they can come to us if they have questions.
O'BRIEN: And obviously every child is an individual, but can you give us some rough idea on ages that are appropriate to be having a discussion like this.
LEVITAS: Well I think once they, you know, get over the age of 10, we can start giving them more information. Certainly younger children five and under don't need to be knowing about these things. However, children as young as five can be taught things about good touch, bad touch, and those are important concepts for kids to know about.
O'BRIEN: What -- you know I feel like we have to fill our children with so many rules, regulations, do's and don'ts. How do we know how much is too much?
LEVITAS: Well, you know, unfortunately the old days are gone, and we live in a new world today where we do have to be more safe, more cognizant of what's going on around us. You need to know your child, know what they're capable of handling and adjust your information accordingly.
O'BRIEN: Children pick up on fear. There are a lot of parents that are afraid. Just watching those couple of stories makes me fearful.
LEVITAS: That's right.
O'BRIEN: It's important not to show that fear or is it OK for them to see that?
LEVITAS: Children should see our concern about the surroundings and again, to remain vigilant of our surroundings, pay attention to what's going on. Teach children not to be tricked, and also teach children to be assertive, to speak up if something makes them feel uncomfortable. Don't model passive behavior for our children.
O'BRIEN: All right, Dr. Levitas, we're going to invite you to stick around, if you don't mind.
LEVITAS: OK.
O'BRIEN: Have a cup of coffee. Get a little something to eat, and come back a little bit later when we would like to entertain your questions in our next hour. We invite you to send us your questions about this very subject, comments, if you have any suggestions for other parents we'll take that too, to wam -- W-A-M -- @cnn.com. Send those e-mails to us forthwith. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
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