Q: I feel overwhelmingly sad and scared and furious reading about the Uvalde shooting. I can’t even imagine the agony of the families who lost a child in this senseless act of violence! My kids have active shooter lockdown drills in their school. It makes me sick to my stomach that that’s a thing! How do I make sense of all of this for my children when it makes no sense to me?
The Uvalde shooting is so heart-breaking! The again-ness of this incident makes it even harder to bear.
I don’t think you have to make sense of it for your children because it doesn’t make sense.
What you can do is create room for your children to talk about their feelings and let them see some of yours.
It’s a good idea to ask your child, “What have you heard?” You may be able to correct some misunderstandings or incorrect information.
Consider the vividness of what you share with your child. Just hearing about a scary event from a caring adult is less vivid than reading a detailed account or seeing a picture of it, which is less vivid than seeing video coverage of sobbing family members. Use your judgement about what your child can handle.
You may want to remind your child that school shootings are horrible tragedies but they are extremely rare.
Follow your child’s lead about how much they want to talk about things. If they’d rather put it aside, that’s OK. It doesn’t mean they’re unfeeling. It may be more than they can process right now.
If they see you crying, explain, “I feel so sad for the families who lost a child.” Naming your feelings makes them more understandable for your child. You may want to add, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Right now, my heart is hurting for the children and families in Uvalde,” or “I’m sad, and I’m OK, at the same time. Tears mean I’m feeling something deeply, right now.”
Most of us feel better when we can take action about a problem. See if you can find a child-size way for your kids to do something helpful and/or tell them what you’ll be doing.
Talk about courage and faith. We’d all like a guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to our loved ones, but we don’t get that. Even getting out of bed in the morning is an act of courage because we have to tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen.
What we can hold onto is two beliefs:
1) There’s more good than bad in life and
2) We get through the bad with the help of people who love us.
Warm wishes,
P.S. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s a 2-min. video I made about When Your Child… Feels Scared About World Events.
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This was very helpful, Dr. Eileen. Such a terrible week, and so hard to discuss with kids. Thank you.