(The Associated Press) -- Waiting in line to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting, attorney and mother Hilary Williams summed up the extra degree of anxiety felt by parents as they assess the latest national terror alert.

"You don't want to be the only mother on the block who didn't do it," said Williams at a New York City hardware store. "The guilt alone would kill you, never mind the chemical attack."

Parents or not, many Americans have been wondering how to respond to the upgraded alert, which for the first time included detailed emergency-response advice from federal officials. But mothers and fathers say that having responsibility for young children brings a sharp focus to their planning.

"For a parent, I think it's worse than for a single person," said Margaret Geiger of Ambler, Pa., the mother of six. "It's always in our thinking - the thought of something horrendous happening, and seeing my children suffer or being separated from them."

Geiger said she and her husband have reviewed a family disaster plan with their children.

"If they were at school and it was evacuated, they can go home with anybody - which is totally against what we've said before - and we'll find them," she said.

Geiger is not convinced that duct tape would do much to deter a biological or chemical attack, but she has assembled some food packets and a first aid kit to take along with the family in case of evacuation.

Randy Allen of Alexandria, Va., father of a 9-year-old boy, said he and his wife have stocked up on groceries, cases of water, duct tape, tarps and sedatives for their two dogs. They talk often about their preparedness plan, which is still a work in progress.

"We are the typical suburban couple with complicated lives anyway, so this just adds another layer," Allen said.

Another Alexandria parent, Liz Davis, has been wrestling with what sort of terrorism talks to have with her 11-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter.

"I don't want to talk to my children about what we're going to do when the 'big one' comes," she said. "But I do want to talk to them, because I don't want them to think people around the world are going to die and I'm just blowing off the whole thing."

In New York City, identified by authorities as one of the more likely targets of an attack, Lucy Price said she has been trying hard to keep her 11- and 12-year-old sons from becoming overly concerned.

"If something actually does happen, I'll probably be the first one trying to get out of the city," said Price, who also has a 4-month-old daughter. "But I try not to live my life under a cloud. A million things could happen."

Price laughed at the notion of sealing her apartment windows and doors with duct tape: "It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

But she said her husband, Michael, a financial trader, was more concerned.

"He's worried about the baby, about every possible fear - ricin, anthrax, bombing," she said. "We're really opposites in that respect."

The American Red Cross has some specific advice for parents in its latest guidelines for responding to a terrorist attack - learn details of the emergency plan at their child's school and make sure the school has the parents' emergency contact numbers.

Dr. Judy Linger, a child psychiatrist at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, Fla., said parents should adjust their family discussions of the terrorist threat according to the age of the children.

With preschool children, parents should reassuringly answer any questions but not try to initiate conversations about the threat, she said.

"Elementary school kids may be talking about it at their school," Linger said. "Make yourself available to them, ask how they're doing."

Parents of adolescents should be ready to have candid discussions about the threat, about emergency planning, even about the adult's own anxieties.

Linger had words of caution for parents of older children - especially for single parents: "You shouldn't expect adolescents to be your peer in making these kinds of decisions. Even with a very mature adolescent, they want to be able to lean on you for direction and leadership."

Linger said one mother she knows had been struggling in vain to get her adolescent children to help draw up a family emergency plan.

"She told me she can't get them to sit down and talk about it," Linger said. "Adolescents tend to consider themselves impervious to anything horrible."

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