By Tracey Dowdy

No matter how diligently you monitor what’s on your screen, it’s inevitable events such as the recent shootings involving police are going to impact your children and make them aware the world can sometimes be a scary place.

Our primary goal from the day our children are born is to keep them safe. Actually, we start from the time we find out we’re pregnant. We cut out coffee, alcohol, deli meat and sushi. We monitor our blood sugar and their prenatal weight.

We teach our children to find a policeman if something bad is happening, but – stepping away from the controversy over guilt and innocence – how do you approach the subject if the policeman is the shooter?

That’s a difficult question and one we as parents need to be careful how we answer. How do we help our kids feel safe and answer their questions when we ourselves often feel helpless and frustrated as well? It’s a complex issue and clearly there are no easy answers, no formulas or 12 step programs to walk them through.

Keep in mind our children will model their reactions on ours, so be aware that your children are always watching. Bad things do happen to good people. Life is often unfair. Your child may be more aware of these facts of life than you realize. Alongside fire drills, many schools have implemented lockdown drills teaching children and adults how to hide and protect themselves from armed or violent intruders.

These tips are a general outline based on conversations and information from trained psychotherapists and psychologists. It’s not a comprehensive list by any means but they are a good place to start.

Listen. Maybe your child will ask a direct question about what they’ve heard. Maybe they’ll tiptoe around the subject and wait for you to bring it up. Listen. Listen when they talk to you, when they talk to their siblings, when they talk to their friends. Some kids will even work through their fear with play. Listen.

Be willing to have a difficult conversation. Always keeping in mind the age and maturity level of your child, using appropriate language, find out what they know. Ask open ended questions and follow their lead. You don’t have to have all the answers. When you don’t know, just say it. “I don’t know. But, you know what, let’s work together to be part of the solution.” Be ready to have the conversation more than once. Often your child will process your discussion and have additional questions or ask the same questions over again. Let them know you’re always available if they have more questions.

Make sure they have their facts straight. I was living on Long Island when 9/11 occurred and it had a direct impact on many of the students in the school where I worked. Though I didn’t allow my own daughters to see the images, the same couldn’t be said for some of their friends. Playgrounds and school cafeterias aren’t the best places to get your news so be sure to clarify if your child has been misinformed.

Keep it simple. Obviously the conversation will be very different with your six-year old from the one you have with your sixteen-year old. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed. D. suggests, “A good analogy is how you might talk about sex. You obviously wouldn’t explain everything to a 5-year-old. Talking about violence and safety is similar.”

Watch for changes in behavior. Sometimes children are uncomfortable articulating their fear so watch for behavioral changes like difficulty sleeping, irritability, sadness, separation anxiety, and even changes in eating habits.

Validate their emotions. Fear is a natural, healthy response. Fear keeps them from running into traffic or touching a hot stove. A simple statement like, “I can understand why you’re afraid. Let’s talk about what we can do to keep you safe.”, validates their fear but gives hope that it’s not completely out of their control.

Be patient. It’s nearly impossible for us to manage our emotions surrounding these events and it’s even more difficult for children. Childhood brings its own set of challenges and your kids are learning to navigate their feelings as they mature.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, teach your children to be part of the solution. Anger and violence generally stem from one of three things – fear, hurt, or a sense of injustice. It’s easy to see all three in the recent shootings so it’s imperative that we teach our children to look for ways to make a difference. In fact, better than teaching them, model the behavior. Help your children understand the impact problems like bullying, poverty and racism have on society and channel that anger into positive change.

“We look at a lot of civil rights activists from the past and the present and how it is always young people who propel these issues forward. Hopefully, they can be inspired by others, and be able to think about, ‘What can my role be? How can I be part of the solution?” – Laura Fuchs, U.S. history and government teacher at Washington D.C.’s H.D. Woodson High School.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

By Tracey Dowdy

“I think the yellow one is called Pikachu.” That sums up my full knowledge of the Pokémon phenomenon. The game has been around since 1996, but my kids weren’t interested when they were younger so I never paid much attention.

Now however, my adult daughter, like a lot of the adults I know, are on a mission to “catch ‘em all.” Pokémon GO seems to have tapped into the nostalgia of the game for many adults, and introduced it to a new generation of fans. Remember, it’s been around for over 20 years so it never really went away, but with the mobile game, it’s surged back to the forefront.

So what is Pokémon GO anyway? It’s a “free ‘augmented reality’ game for iOS and Android smart devices in which players must physically move around the real world in order to capture Pokémon (short for pocket monsters), which are fantastical creatures from the ever-popular video game/collectible card game/anime franchise of the same name.” (The Wrap) In other words, it’s an online/offline scavenger hunt version of the original game.

Download the game, create an account, then open the game and you’ll see an avatar the game has generated for you pinpointed to your exact GPS location. Every time you’re in the vicinity of a Pokémon, your phone will vibrate and a Pokémon will appear on a map. Touch it and your phone will then switch to Camera Mode and you’ll see the Pokémon on your screen, superimposed over the image.

Of course to catch the creature, you’ll need to have Pokeballs, which you collect at Pokestops, generally attached to landmarks like parks, statues and churches. Oddly, many churches are listed as “gyms”, where you can have Pokémon fight one another. That’s fine unless you’re Boon Sheridan, and your house in actually an old church. Sheridan’s home has been tagged as a Pokéstop, so from early morning until late night, there are strangers in front of his house, in his yard, sometimes sitting in their cars blocking the driveway, all training and learning how to fight Pokémon.

That’s not the only time the game has made the news. Last week a woman in Wyoming found a body in a river near her house while hunting a Pokémon, and according to police in Missouri, armed teens used the game to rob players. Using the geolocation element of the game, the teens were able to determine the location and how isolated potential victims would be.

Nintendo and the other creators of Pokémon partnered with Niantic Labs to create the game that seems to have moved augmented reality from a gaming industry niche to the mainstream. Until last fall, Niantic Labs was a subsidiary of Google and its founder John Hanke was instrumental in developing Google Maps and Google Earth. Google stayed tied to the project when Niantic and Hanke moved on and reportedly invested $30 million in the development of Pokémon GO.

There’s a million reasons to get outside and enjoy the long days of summer before we jump back into school routines, and Pokémon GO is one of the more fun options for our tech loving kids. It’s cheaper than a Fitbit and backs up what First Lady Michelle Obama has been telling our kids all along: Getting up and moving doesn’t have to be boring. Catching monsters in your neighborhood has never been this much fun. So what are you waiting for? You know you “Gotta catch ‘em all!”

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

By Tracey Dowdy

My first video camera was roughly the size of the microwave currently sitting in my kitchen. It was bulky, heavy, and designed to use full-size VHS tapes. Plus, there was no easy way to edit movies so you were stuck fast forwarding past the 15 minutes dad shot of his feet instead of the championship game. Now, we can take quality videos with our smartphones, edit them, and even produce a Hollywood quality film as Sean Baker did with Tangerine, a movie shot entirely on an iPhone 5S.

One of the more fun and artistic effects you can create on your smartphone is to shoot video in slow motion. Whether it’s the satisfaction of an epic belly flop or the thrill of watching someone cross the finish line, slow motion video offers drama befitting those moments that fly past us so quickly.

If you know you want the video to be slow motion, choose Slo-Mo in your recording options. If you realize after the fact, no problem, you can slow it down with some simple editing.

To create a slow motion movie on your iOS or Android device, simply follow these steps:

iOS

• Open the iMovie app ($4.99)
• Choose Movie (not Trailer)
• Choose Create
• Import by selecting the clip you want to edit
• Tap the timeline and choose your import speed by tapping on the speedometer
• Use the slider to adjust playback speed – tap the Play button to preview and adjust as needed
• Tap Done to save your changes
• Open the Share menu to save and export your movie
• That’s it!

Android

• Open Adobe Premiere Clip (Free – Google Play store)
• Choose the video you want to edit from your Gallery
• Choose Freeform – Trim, sequence, and edit manually
• Under Options, choose the speed slider
• Tap the Share button to save your changes
• That’s it!

Now go capture those belly flops! Summer won’t last forever.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.