There was a time was when parents insisted that no matter what their children were doing, they had to be in front of the television to watch the 7 o’clock news.

Not so today.

The kind of news making headlines these days seems to be taken from an action flick or a horror movie — man gunned down in the city, schoolboy murdered in the school yard, unidentified body found.

This may be our reality as adults, but really, how are our children coping with the news of the day?

I can only speak for my nine-year-old son — not very well.

At the sight of dead bodies lying in the streets, an image brought to him on the 20-inch television screen, he immediately holds his chest, his breathing increases, his eyes pop open and then he turns to me and asks: “Mummy that happened here? In Trinidad? Mummy, I can’t watch any more.”

Time was when all that children had to worry about was stubbing their toe on a stone.

Now they have to worry about bandits and reprisal shootings and drive by shootings on busy city streets.

Tonight, before you go to bed and just after you pray for the crime to cease in this country, pray for our children too that they will not be a traumatised bunch.