Coping With the Wildfires: 5 Tips for Supporting Kids With Developmental and Behavioral Health Issues

The wildfires have unsettled families across Los Angeles County, posing a distinct problem for parents of children with autism and other behavioral health conditions. School closures and home evacuations have undone basic routines, which can create great distress in kids who don’t function well without regimen and structure.

“For those kids who are already struggling with how to regulate themselves and their behavior, losing those anchor points is troubling,” says Micah Orliss, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Behavioral Health Institute.

On top of that, Dr. Orliss says, the vivid nature of an ongoing fire intensifies their fear and anxiety. “They’re confronted with visible reminders of it everywhere. Even if parents are good about turning off TV or phones, you can still see the smoke in the sky. You see the ash falling down.”

Dr. Orliss is Program Area Lead for Project Heal, CHLA’s trauma psychology program. As such, he has expertise in treating children who have been through various traumatic experiences. He says that in the midst of the fires that have devastated Los Angeles, kids “have lost their grounding.”

Parents can help them regain it by considering what coping strategies will work best for their children. Here are five that Dr. Orliss advises following.

1. Keep the message simple. In a crisis such as a natural disaster, Dr. Orliss says it’s best not to complicate what you tell kids with developmental and behavioral health issues. Short, simple, and essential is what’s needed. “I counsel parents to keep a really simple message. I will sometimes say: ‘What is a message that you could fit on a bumper sticker that you could tell your child that would be helpful for them?’”

He offers examples of bumper sticker responses: “That was scary, but we're safe.” Or “Our family helps, and we're going to help the people who were harmed by this.”

It's a message that can easily be repeated to kids with autism, for example, who tend to ask the same questions multiple times. “If you have that bumper sticker explanation, it's really easy to say, and it's hopefully easy for them to understand and, eventually, internalize.”

2. Limit media exposure. Dr. Orliss says controlling the messages coming from outside sources will also provide shelter to kids, especially those on the spectrum, who are prone to fixate on particular ideas or fears. Toward that end, he says limiting exposure to news reporting—though not shutting it out entirely—is important to prevent escalating anxiety, depression, or other mental health disruptions.

“Leaving the TV on the news may be helpful for a parent, but it’s not very helpful for the child because that child's going to see and hear things that may get stuck in their brain in a way that is really hard for them to understand,” Dr. Orliss says. “It's going to make them particularly anxious and parents will struggle with that.”

3. Give them the opportunity to talk—or not. “Some kids are going to want to talk about this a lot,” Dr. Orliss says, “and you're going to have to be patient and let them do that. Other kids are not going to want to talk about this at all. That's OK too.”

You should expect kids with behavioral issues, which Dr. Orliss says are often expressions of some underlying emotion or trauma, to have those issues exacerbated by the stress and trauma of current events. The most effective approach to getting your kids to voice what they’re feeling is to simply not force it on them. They will talk if they are comfortable.

“Kids are less likely to talk about this if you say to them, ‘Tell me what you're feeling right now.’ Just sit down with them, bring out the Legos or the crayons for coloring. It’s so much easier to get kids to talk about what they're feeling when they're in their natural setting of playing. If we don't do too much directing but follow their lead, it's amazing what they will tell us about what's going on. Going out for a walk, kicking around a soccer ball—those kinds of things really help kids open up.”

Is it going to be a terrible thing that happened and there was nothing we could do? Or is it going to be a really bad thing that happened, but we were able to be safe, we were prepared, we rebuilt, and we helped our community?

CHLA's Micah Orliss, PhD

4. Find ways to restore routines. Returning kids with developmental and behavioral health conditions to their established routines is critical to keeping them from being overcome by the disturbance to their lives. “Kids are like adults,” Dr. Orliss says. “It helps us to have a predictable schedule, and that's especially true for kids on the spectrum.”

Dr. Orliss recognizes that parents may not always have the time to set aside half an hour to play with their kids, but says reestablishing routines in the smallest of ways can be helpful, such as simply organizing a play date with a friend or watching a movie together.

“Parents have a sense of what their kids like, and what they need to feel fulfilled,” he says. “Finding little opportunities to return to some sense of a predictable routine that their child is familiar with is going to make them feel safer.”

5. Frame the experience. Ultimately, Dr. Orliss says, how parents talk about these wildfires will determine how their children will experience them and eventually remember them.

“We have the opportunity to help write the story for our children,” he says. “Is it going to be a terrible thing that happened and there was nothing we could do? Or is it going to be a really bad thing that happened, but we were able to be safe, we were prepared, we rebuilt, and we helped our community?”

He says remembering that first tip—keep the message simple—is key. “Come back to that bumper stick message, reminding them, ‘You're still safe. We're going to keep you safe. We will be OK.’ Even if you don't know what that's going to look like, it will help your kids to feel a sense of reassurance that, one way or another, we're going to get through this.”