Experts: How to prepare kids for airport security

Experts offer the following advice on preparing children

for the new airport security measures:

SECURITY

Explain to children before heading to the airport that they will pass through a metal detector or a scanner, or might be patted down by a Transportation Security Administration employee. Let them know that they will see all the passengers doing it, advised Wendy Doret, a psychologist in Dix Hills.

SAFETY

Tell your child that the purpose is to keep everybody safe on the plane. If you're going through the scanners, go first so your child can see that nothing happens to you, suggested Dr. Victor Fornari, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital, part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.

TOUCHING

If you opt for the pat-down, explain to your child that it's OK for the official employee to touch him or her with parents present, in the same way it's OK for the doctor to do an examination, Fornari said. Don't project your own anxieties that the child might pick up on, he said.

CHOICES

Discuss with your adolescent which

is preferable - the scanner or a

pat-down, which adolescents might

find particularly

awkward, Fornari said.