by Rachel Hancock

Zombies. Yes, I do mean zombies. There are more zombie movies and TV shows nowadays then there was some 10 or 20 years ago. Children are growing up knowing about these living dead people, and though some kids are scared of them, others actually enjoy the idea of them becoming real. If your child is one of the latter, then what a better thing to talk to them about. Why try to change the subject when you can have a conversation with them that they actually enjoy?

I know that some of you may be trying to avoid any nightmares that a zombie conversation could be about, but you shouldn’t be. If you child does get scared after the lights are out that there is a zombie under their bed, then why blame the zombies? You need to prove your child that a scary conversation is just that: a conversation, nothing more. Even if that means you have to get up in the middle of the night and shine a light under the bed, it tells the child that you are there for them.

An apocalypse of any kind is a great conversation starter. You may think me wrong, but if you were to bring it up, so say a teenager, it could turn into a very serious and very interesting conversation about how you both, or even you alone, would survive. The other day, my peers and I were thinking about what we would do if a shooter came to our school. Although this is a touchy subject to adults, I believe it is something you should discuss with your child. No matter what they say they may do, it becomes different when it is really happening, so it is important when you go over this subject. When I told my mother that I had this conversation, she asked me what I said I would do. I told her I would play dead until help arrived, but she told me no. She told me what she heard differently, and we talked about it.

It is important to talk about the serious subjects, whether or not you want. There could be a time when your children have to make an important decision for themselves, and you don’t want them to make the bad choice all because no one told them what they needed to do.

Another factor to keep in mind is that parents like to think their child is not mentally ready to talk about these subjects. I do not know your child, you do, but are you sure that they cannot handle it? If you child watches the news, even for thirty or so minutes, every night, they know about the real world. They know about the dangers, yet they may not know what they should do if some of those dangers were to happen to them. It is important to go over these subjects, even if it is about zombies.

The decisions they make in that scenario could be something they use later on in another problem. Talk to them.

RACHEL HANCOCK lives in Sedley and is a junior at Southampton High School.