Once when Z was just about five years old, lighting hit our neighbor’s house.
It was early morning and the weather was storming outside. I was awake but still drowsing in bed when we heard an enormous boom.
It was loud enough to wake Z up – and for me to wonder if lightning might have even hit OUR house. Between the lightning flashes and that super loud and terrifying sound, it was pretty scary.
Add to that the fact that random electronics started going off in our house like in Poltergeist. Oh, and of course, E just happened to be out of town on business!
I walked around inside our house a bit, and all seemed okay. I was still comforting Z and our dog a few minutes later when we heard the sirens of multiple emergency vehicles come careening down our street and park nearby.
At that point, I was curious and also wanted to reassure Z, so we got dressed and went outside to rubberneck and see what was going on.
There were several emergency vehicles outside our house, along with a small gathering of other curious neighbors.
We soon learned that lightning had hit the house just three doors down from us. Their TV sets and other electronics were fried and the place smelled like ozone, but otherwise, all was okay. Thankfully, there was no fire and no one was hurt.
In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t taken Z outside to watch the fire trucks – or I wish that I had talked with her about the situation differently. You see, Z is a highly sensitive child but we didn’t know that in those days.
At the time, it seemed like Z was as curious and fascinated by the situation as I was – and little kids always love to see flashing lights and emergency vehicles up close. Looking back, though, that early morning ended up becoming a very scary memory for her and even caused nightmares for a while.
I wish I had taken more time to explain that it’s quite rare for homes to be struck by lightning (only about 1 in 200 homes are struck each year). I also could have used the incident as a way to show her how fast the response time was from multiple fire departments, to reinforce that we live in a very safe area.
Because Z only seemed interested that morning, not traumatized, I didn’t realize that her anxious little mind was internally flashing with warnings. To me, it felt like an adventure and making the most of being woken up too early by a storm.
For our little one, however, that experience ended up being quite traumatic and a core memory that resulted in years of being worried and scared about a possible house fire or another calamity.
Z never had the common childhood nightmares about monsters in the dark. Instead, she had recurring nightmares about real-life scenarios that could happen, such as house fires or break-ins. She was terrified for years about the possibility of bad guys with guns coming here; I blame the school’s ALICE drills, which started in kindergarten, for that one.
It’s never possible to remove all fears from a child, and our fear is there for a reason – to keep us safe. Still, I have always hated that Z grew up with so many traumatic, realistic fears that she shouldn’t have had to worry about at such a young age. I am so relieved that, as she’s gotten older, her fears have been tempered with the knowledge that it’s highly unlikely for any of those things to actually happen here.
There’s a reason we’ve never watched the nightly news; I’m sure the “if it bleeds, it leads” news mentality would have led to many more nightmares and frightful fears for our serious-minded, sensitive kiddo. I do still try to shelter her from the worst of the world, although sometimes it’s hard as she hears about things at school and from friends.
Do you try to keep your highly sensitive child protected from tragedies and negative news events? I’m always up for hearing from other parents of HSCs – feel free to reach out in the comments below or on Facebook or Instagram.
