Parents and children of all ages can be severely affected by current events, especially traumatic ones like the recent mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Individuals all over the world are seeking support, answers, education, and a sense of safety and control.
Many of the fears we collectively experience as a society after a traumatic event are fueled by the unknown and mixed messages within our society. We are inundated by information on television, social media, and neighborly conversations with friends and family. Even if we aren’t witness to the event in person, we can still suffer from acute stress disorder, a short term form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Our response to anxiety is cultivated by ambiguity, and if we are unsure of what might happen in the future, our fears are triggered. It’s not mentally healthy to live with excessive worry that is out of our control or live in a world of constant fear. Plus, anxiety symptoms lowers your immune system, so the higher your stress hormone is (cortisol), the more you may be at risk for physical illness, so our anxiety is counterproductive. Too much fear and anxiety can instill panic, so parents should manage their anxiety before passing on the anxiety to their children.
In this blog, I hope to provide therapeutic education and a guide to help parents navigate their own anxiety and grief as well as how to help their children cope after a traumatic event.
Show Kids Healthy Emotions and How to Handle Them
Children learn emotions and how to handle them through their parents, so even though it’s healthy to show our kids we are human and it is ok to show emotions appropriately, we also need to show them control and calmness in a heightened situation (ie: it is ok to be sad and cry but we wouldn’t throw ourselves on the floor and stay there all day or it’s ok to be scared but we aren’t locking ourselves in our bedrooms or screaming “we are all going to die” in the middle of the street or it’s ok to be angry but it’s not ok to punch a hole in the wall). If your child is very young, start by labeling basic emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. As your child gets older, you can begin educating your children on a plethora of other emotions like embarrassment, shyness, and other more cognitively advanced emotional states. Once you label emotions, act them out for your child via role play so your child learns how to pair the emotional word with the action. As your child grows, you can start having conversations with your children about what they are feeling and then how to cope with those emotions.
Describe Current Events in an Age Appropriate Way
I recommend exposing your children only to information they can cognitively handle at their particular developmental age. I also suggest speaking in their words. Be a listener and ask them what they know and then only respond based on what they know in the language they use, but avoid going in too much detail beyond that, if it isn’t urgently needed. What you tell a toddler will be different than a high school aged child. If a younger child asks about the recent school shooting, you can say something like, “something terrible happened today at a school and even though you are safe, some children and teachers were hurt. The police was involved and the person that caused harm was caught.” If they are older, you can talk in more detail about what happened. Oder children will possibly also want to see photos or watch the news with you. In this case, you can ask them what they think and how they feel about the situation in a more factual and matter of a fact way. Try to talk to your child first, before they find out about it from someone else, most likely a friend or teacher at school. The day after the most recent school shooting, many schools (preschool and elementary schools included) were proactively taking action by staffing police officers in front of the school and or in the front office. This is obviously something a young child will observe and wonder what is going on. So preparing your child before they hear information elsewhere can help tremendously coming from you, first.
Do a Daily Check In To Keep a Pulse on Emotional and Mental State
I suggest checking in with yourself and your children daily. Choose one word you are feeling and encourage your child to do the same. Let them describe the emotion they are feeling to you. Use simple words and hear how they are explaining their emotions. You can also prompt them with words like mad, sad, happy, excited, bored, confused, frustrated, angry, scared, worried, etc if they are younger and can’t think of the exact word they want to share. I also suggest using a sliding scale and check in with them once a day on how they are feeling on a scale from 1-10 (1 being the worst, 10 being the best) and then track and monitor their level of emotional anxiety each day and then respond appropriately.
Limit Exposure to Flooding Content
I would say try not to let a topic like this take over your world. Try not to be constantly searching for updates, but instead, take breaks and live life with as much normalcy as possible. How much is too much for your child? And more importantly, how much is too much for you? Parents are humans, too, and you have to determine how much is too much for you before you need a break or a digital detox. That being said, I would suggest limiting how much you talk about a specific current event. But only tell your children/show them what they need to know. If they don’t seem to notice all the chaos maybe not mention anything out of the norm to them after the initial conversation. Follow their lead. If they seem unaffected, don’t offer any information that may concern them. This goes for verbal discussions as well as sharing photos and videos. Children and adults can get flooded with too much oral and visual stimulation when the subject matter is heavy. So take conversations and details in small, short doses. The older the child is, the more they will want to know, and the more they will be exposed to at school, so based on your family values and level of comfort, decide how much you want to share and how much time you want to spend talking about it. I say, as long as you and your child’s daily routine hasn’t being affected negatively by fear and anxiety, they can cognitively, emotionally, and mentally handle the information you are sharing with them.
Discuss an Emergency Safety Plan
Empower your children to come up with an emergency plan for any type of emergency like a fire, earthquake, power outage, quarantine, school lockdown, etc. This will help them feel more empowered and secure with what to expect if there is an emergency and help ease some distress. An advance plan will also give your child a sense of control. You may even help your child create an emergency kit. Make sure there are items in your kit like a flashlight, bandages, water, blanket, etc so they feel prepared just in case – this can help lessen anxiety because they are being proactive in the solution to the problem. Teach them what they can do to be proactive and how to be safe. We don’t want to give our children a false sense of security and safety, however, we want to help them feel safe and secure in their immediate environment. This may mean helping them develop a safe place at home where they feel secure and or where to go if they are in public and need a safe haven when they are not at home.
Validate and Respect Emotions and Emotional State
If your child expresses a fear, listen to them, validate them, and give them coping skills to help maintain fears and concerns. Let them know it is perfectly normal to experience emotions and reassure them that it’s ok to feel sad, angry, and or scared. You can even tell them you are having the same set of emotions. You can also reassure they are safe. Ask your child how you can help support them mentally and emotionally. The one thing to avoid is to shame them for feeling a certain way or shut them down when they are expressing themselves emotionally. Keep an open mind and allow them space to feel how they need to feel.
Stages of Grief You May Experience After a Traumatic Event
The typical stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Each parent and child will experience grief differently, but in general, these stages might be experienced in some manifestation or another after a traumatic event. You might be sad, feel empathic, and even cry. The emotional release is healthy, so if you have those emotions, externalize them and let them out. You may ask yourself why over and over again and ruminate on the details of the event and feel a little helpless and hopeless. You may also experience some sort of denial that the event even happened or could happen to you. In this case, denial is normal, and also a way you or your child is protecting themselves. The denial is helping to cope, and can help in the short term. You or your child might even start bargaining. This means you may start researching on how to prevent school shootings from happening in the future, gun control laws, and other school shootings from over the year. And you may wonder to yourself, if you just did something, things could change. It is also very normal to experience anger. You may take your anger out on your children, friends, a spouse or partner, or even other parents in the pick up line. Your child could take their anger out on teachers, friends at school, get into fights, hit their siblings, etc. Although anger is a natural way to experience grief, I encourage you and your child to learn positive ways to deal with anger instead. And lastly, you may come to an acceptance phase of grief. You may accept the imperfections of society and what happened. You may see the world a bit differently moving forward, yet you won’t ruminate on every detail and let it affect your daily routine or emotional state.
Ways to Emotionally Cope with Fear and Anxiety
Coping solutions for anxiety can include: sensory grounding exercises, visual imagery exercises, utilizing a calming corner in your home, giving your child fidgets or some sort of comfort toy, spending time playing outside, art, play, journaling, getting exercise, eating well, getting enough sleep, and mindfulness exercises.
How You Can Help
If you want to proactively get involved to use your voice and help prevent future school shootings, you can visit @everytown or everytown.org/act. You can also text BOLD to 644-33. Another resource is @momsdemand on Instagram or momsdemandaction.org.
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