My child is afraid

[Whittington]

My child is 5yrs. and she goes to a christain school, they had a lesson about Leprosy and showed them pictures. Now she is afraid that she will get leprosy and she tells me her whole body hurts. I tried to tell her that she want get it, now she goes around wanting band aids to put on her fingers, can you please help me...
Mary

[cay8099]

Tell her that God made it so that noone gets leprosy. God mad it go away.

[roxaneparvex]

I'm not sure that telling her God can fix every thing is a good idea. If the school think she's old enough to see those images she is definitely old enough to understand the facts. Explain to her that many scientist and doctors have been working very hard to find a vaccine against leprosy and they have been successful. Some people still have the virus in very poor country because they cant' afford the vaccine but she must know she is very lucky to live in a country where leprosy is extremely rare and can be treated very easily. If after this she's still scared, find a way to make her swallow something safe (but bad testing so she doesn't think medicine taste good and would want to have more if she sees some) and pretend it's the vaccine that you just bought for her and now she's completely safe.
Telling her that God can fix this kind of things will first of all make her think that in the future anything that could happen in her life will be automatically fixed by God and she will never have to make any effort to try to fix things on her own and second of all if something bad ever happens to her she will not understand why god let her down and may stop having faith.

[cay8099]

I see what you are saying, but a 5 year old is not going to understand medical mumbo jumbo. She will understand that God helped make it so that she won't get leprosy. She needs reassurance not the history of leprosy. She has the rest of her life to learn that bad things happen.