newenglander
New member
Yesterday my wife (33F) and I (37M) were in a catastrophic motor vehicle collision (MVC) that totaled her car. It instantly caught on fire and within 5 minutes, the car and all our possessions inside were incinerated.
Fortunately we are both ok.
We were on the way to pick our daughter (4F) up from daycare just before 4pm, so she wasn’t in the car thank goodness, but we ended up spending almost 3 hours on the side of the highway talking to police, fire, and getting evaluated by EMTs, before a state trooper drove us home so we could hop into my car and drive to the ER, where we both were held until after midnight.
We authorized one of her classmate’s mom to pick her up and take her home, and she ended up sleeping over (her first non-extended family friend overnight
) and that mom told her we were having “car troubles.” She had a great time at the sleepover, and that mom took her to daycare in the morning.
My wife and I are relatively ok, bumps and bruises and very shaken up, and we both seem to be processing the trauma of almost dying quite differently.
We spent literally all day today running around doing “MVC admin cleanup” like getting her rental car, buying and installing a new car seat, talking to Incs co’s, etc. It’s been nonstop to the point that it was 2pm before either of us had realized we hadn’t eaten today.
Anyhoo, to the now:
My wife picked up our daughter from daycare while I ran some errands, and now the 3 of us are at my wife’s friend’s apartment hanging out, and she cracked a few jokes about how we almost died.
Processing trauma with gallows humor is totally appropriate and I have no issue with that, but she made several of those comments while our daughter was in her lap or laying in her arms, and neither of us have talked to her about our MVC, or even talked to each other about if/how we’re going to talk to her about it.
I made a comment to my wife along the lines of “I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about almost
in front of our daughter without any context or without discussing the extent of the accident with her.” My wife said “I strongly disagree, and I think we should talk about this later in private” (her friends were in the same room).
I dropped it, but i want to find out from those better versed in child psychology than either of us- what is the appropriate way to talk to her about our accident, if at all? We don’t want to traumatize her or make her fearful for our health and safety, and I don’t want to invalidate my wife’s trauma processing/coping, but I don’t know whether or not it’s healthy to joke about us dying in an MVC in front of a perceptive 4 year old.
How should we approach this situation?
Fortunately we are both ok.
We were on the way to pick our daughter (4F) up from daycare just before 4pm, so she wasn’t in the car thank goodness, but we ended up spending almost 3 hours on the side of the highway talking to police, fire, and getting evaluated by EMTs, before a state trooper drove us home so we could hop into my car and drive to the ER, where we both were held until after midnight.
We authorized one of her classmate’s mom to pick her up and take her home, and she ended up sleeping over (her first non-extended family friend overnight
) and that mom told her we were having “car troubles.” She had a great time at the sleepover, and that mom took her to daycare in the morning. My wife and I are relatively ok, bumps and bruises and very shaken up, and we both seem to be processing the trauma of almost dying quite differently.
We spent literally all day today running around doing “MVC admin cleanup” like getting her rental car, buying and installing a new car seat, talking to Incs co’s, etc. It’s been nonstop to the point that it was 2pm before either of us had realized we hadn’t eaten today.
Anyhoo, to the now:
My wife picked up our daughter from daycare while I ran some errands, and now the 3 of us are at my wife’s friend’s apartment hanging out, and she cracked a few jokes about how we almost died.
Processing trauma with gallows humor is totally appropriate and I have no issue with that, but she made several of those comments while our daughter was in her lap or laying in her arms, and neither of us have talked to her about our MVC, or even talked to each other about if/how we’re going to talk to her about it.
I made a comment to my wife along the lines of “I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about almost
in front of our daughter without any context or without discussing the extent of the accident with her.” My wife said “I strongly disagree, and I think we should talk about this later in private” (her friends were in the same room). I dropped it, but i want to find out from those better versed in child psychology than either of us- what is the appropriate way to talk to her about our accident, if at all? We don’t want to traumatize her or make her fearful for our health and safety, and I don’t want to invalidate my wife’s trauma processing/coping, but I don’t know whether or not it’s healthy to joke about us dying in an MVC in front of a perceptive 4 year old.
How should we approach this situation?