Tradition and story time — not medical advice
The Rabbit Who Thought the Sky Was Falling
Retold for young children from Jataka Tales (retold by Ellen C. Babbitt, 1912), public domain.
A rabbit was napping under a palm tree one afternoon when — bump! — something landed on the ground right behind him. He hadn't seen it fall, and before he even looked, he thought: the earth is breaking apart! And he ran.
Another rabbit saw him tearing past and called out, "Where are you running?" "Don't ask — the earth is breaking up!" So the second rabbit ran too. And the next one they passed joined in, and the next, until hundreds of rabbits were racing across the forest, all shouting the same thing.
Soon a deer ran with them, then a fox, then an elephant, all because everyone believed everyone else. At the bottom of a hill, the lion heard the thundering feet and the frightened shouting, and thought, "That can't be right." So he ran ahead and roared — once, twice, three times — until every animal skidded to a stop.
"Why is everyone running?" asked the lion. "The earth is breaking up!" they all said. "Who saw it happen?" the lion asked, and slowly, animal by animal, the story traced back — deer, fox, rabbit after rabbit — until it reached the very first rabbit, the one who'd been asleep under the palm tree.
The lion carried that rabbit back to where he'd been napping, and there on the ground lay a fallen coconut. "That's what you heard," said the lion gently. "Not the earth — just a coconut." And the lion trotted back to tell all the other animals, so they could stop running and rest.
Talk about it (ours, not from the source): it took a calm friend asking "who actually saw it happen?" to sort out the truth. Is there a worry you'd like to check with someone calm?
Source: Jataka Tales, retold by Ellen C. Babbitt (1912, The Century Co.) — "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit". Public domain. Read the original.
Why public domain: US: first published 1912, more than 95 years ago, so public domain in the US regardless of the author's death date (Project Gutenberg eBook #62514).