The Relationship Between Weather and Child Psychology

Ruby is very worried about the weather.  It all started with the earthquake and flooding in Japan.  That was the first major disaster that she was probably aware of, and she saw images on the news, and facebook, and wherever else she happened to be spying, that were very troubling.  She asked me if Vermont was going to have any earthquakes.  Now, I don’t know how much a four year old is really going to understand about any of this, but I brought out a map of the tectonic plates and showed her how we did not live near the edges of any of them.  We looked up where the biggest and most earthquakes happen in the world, and she was satisfied that Vermont was not in any danger from major earthquakes.

But she was still worried about tidal waves.  After all, we lived right near Lake Champlain, right?  Ha ha, I told her, we are in no danger of flooding from Lake Champlain.  I told her this because we had this discussion before Lake Champlain flooded the state and destroyed everything.  But that wasn’t a tidal wave, that was just stupid rain and snow.  I showed her a map of the United States, and showed her which states were near the wave-full ocean, and which states (Vermont) were not.  Once again, she seemed pretty satisfied that we were not going to get any tidal waves where we lived.

Then somehow she heard about Hurricanes.  Well, good ol’ Dad looked up Hurricane info online and showed here that by the time any hurricanes got to Vermont, they would be pretty tired out and all we would get was a little wind and rain.  Problem solved.

I did tell her about blizzards, and how that was about as bad as it got up here.  But the thing about blizzards is that you generally get a warning when they are coming, and as long as you are inside with food and battery powered space heaters, you’re probably going to be fine.  I even showed her the steeply sloped roofs that buildings in Vermont have, to prevent collapse due to snow build-up.  She seemed fine with us having blizzards, since, as she pointed out, blizzards also meant snowmen, sledding, and hot chocolate.  All minds were at ease.

Oh wait, did we forgot tornadoes?  Well, Ruby didn’t.  She was suddenly worried one day that a tornado would get us.  I told her how tornadoes work, and how the more big stuff they hit, like mountains, the weaker they get, and that’s why there are often tornadoes in big flat places, but not so much in high mountainy places, like Vermont.  Except then we had tornado warnings all yesterday, and huge storms.  Maybe Ruby has the right idea.  Maybe we should be worried.  But if Vermont isn’t safe, then I’m out of ideas.  Maybe Mars?  And should we be worried about geysers?  And don’t mountains sometimes have volcanoes…?  I give up.