Tragedy happens all around us, but when it involves innocent
children there are few words that can express the pain any caring person feels. This morning, a shooter took the lives of 20 innocent school children including several teachers and staff members at a small
town school here in Connecticut. That
means Heaven accepted 20 new little angels this morning. If your own children haven’t heard about it,
they most likely will. Here are some
tips on how to help your children handle the news of this unthinkable tragedy.
First and foremost it’s important that you settle any fears your
children may have. They are torn between
the worlds of fantasy and reality, so it may be very difficult for them to tell
the difference between what is real and what isn’t. Make every effort to listen to them carefully
and with 100% of your attention. It is
important that you help them feel safe and calm. Sometimes they may fear that what happened to
the children at this school will happen to them.
Minimize (if not eliminate) any news coverage or discussion
about the tragedy. The less they hear
about it the better it will be for them.
Refrain from having the news on when they are present at home or in the
car while you’re driving. Too much
exposure will overwhelm them and generate more fearful feelings that it could
come to their school
Allow yourself to grieve privately. Your children look to you and your feelings as
a guide on how they should feel. If you
are feeling sad about this event and they notice, your children will feel sadder. Allow yourself to grieve in private, away
from your children. Allow a friend or
family member to stay with your children while you find the time to be alone to
let your feelings out about this tragedy.
Avoid keeping it all bottled up inside.
Take measures to pull your family closer together over the
next few days. Cancel less important activities
and create family time to help your child feel more loved. Take measures to feel gratitude that this did
not happen to your family and hold and love your children a little more than
usual. It will help to further settle
your child’s fears and help you deal with the sadness we are all feeling about
this tragic event.
Finally, use this occurrence to be sure that you are taking
all possible measures to ensure your child’s safety where ever she goes. It is doubtful that the families who lost
children in this massacre could have done anything different to avoid what
happened. But tragedies come in all
forms so take a closer look at all possible risks that could affect your child’s
safety and well being.
Excellent suggestions for comfort and care. We just cannot stress enough to not allow ourselves to overdose on the disturbing details. The media has a way of sucking us in by replaying the tragedy over and over again and we must take care of ourselves now, too.
ReplyDeleteYou're right Barbara. I think what many of us do is continue to watch to search for that one piece of information that helps us understand why someone could do such an evil thing to innocent children and adults. We hope to find that one piece of information so we can help others to avoid such acts, or to avoid those who might fit the profile. But all to often, we discover the person who committed the act appeared to be as normal as us, previous to the tragedy. Thank you for readying.
ReplyDeleteExcellent commenrary, Bill. The only thing I want to add is Nurture EMPATHY!
ReplyDeleteGood comment Timothy. This tends to be a difficult task for some parents. The first step in parenting, in helping to nurture empathy is to STOP using "feeling stoppers" when a child brings a problem to his or her parent. Parents are too quick to "stuff" the feeling in front of them for many reasons. I urge parents to just let their kids feel the feeling they are experiencing in the moment, and to help the child process it effectively.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading Timothy!
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