I'm wondering that our gentleness around their anxieties actually makes them worse.
Basically agree; the main way out of anxiety is exposure and developing coping skills.
Though one can take this thesis too far: I also believe some people are wired for anxiety and it's not necessarily the parents' fault if the child is anxious.
We do not censor reading material, only lightly censor radio news, newspapers are readily available. There is no TV news here (because misleading, not because frightening).
We have definitely had moments where kids learned of very upsetting things through reading the newspaper; we answer their questions frankly and try to show them how WE (as adults) cope with such terrible news. Sharing our thinking strategies has helped enormously.
