What Parents Don’t Need to Hear After a School Shooting
Parents shouldn't have to learn to talk to their children about mass shootings.
Posted May 24, 2022 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- Be sure that you are in a calm, quiet area, and start by asking your child what they might have already heard about the event.
- Limit your child or teen's viewing of the 24/7 news cycle following a mass school shooting to reduce the likelihood of secondary trauma.
- Use age-appropriate language; younger children don't need details, and older teens may need misinformation corrected.
- Monitor for any signs of anxiety or depression, such as avoidance of school, social isolation, and increased tantrums.
Four years ago, after a spate of mass shootings, I kept getting similar emails and messages from concerned parents, asking for advice on how to talk to their children following these highly-publicized horrific events. Somewhat in disbelief, I sat down and wrote.
I wrote here about how parents can help their children cope with hearing about mass shootings. About how to talk to their children about school shootings. Because that year, at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a school shooter shot at students and staff and killed 17 people.
And not many years before, 26 people were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, with 20 of the victims being children between ages six and seven. It felt surreal to be writing guidance on how parents can cope with such unfathomable acts.
Today, I sit here again. All afternoon, I have fielded phone calls and emails from parents, schools, and reporters, asking, yet again, about how parents can talk to their children about the horrific tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a shooter shot and killed 19 children and two teachers.
As I sit here in disbelief again, I numbly give my professional guidance. I tell reporters that parents should limit their children's access to the 24/7 news coverage of the school shooting as studies have shown that watching these images and videos can cause secondary trauma to the young viewers, especially for children, as graphic images tend to remain in children's memory longer than words and cause longer-lasting distress.
I tell parents of young children how they can start their conversations with their children by inquiring what their child might have already heard about the event, by asking open-ended questions, engaging in active listening, and calmly addressing questions in a simple yet developmentally age-appropriate way.
I tell them that, in the upcoming weeks, they should monitor their children a bit more closely for those that might develop any signs of anxiety or depression, such as avoidance of school, social isolation, and increased tantrums. And to seek out professional help right away if they notice these signs.
I respond to emails from teachers about how they can help their students process their feelings and fears in the classroom in the upcoming days. And we speak to the grief that educators are feeling as they wrestle with the bleak awareness that their job is not only to teach their students to learn but also to shield them and themselves from bullets while doing so.
I'm asked about the pandemic and how it might affect children's response to today's school shooting. I talk about how the pandemic has already increased the baseline of chronic stress and anxiety amongst children and their parents over the past two years.
Many children have already encountered multiple stressors and traumas over the course of the pandemic, such as losing family members to COVID, having reduced social and community ties, and experiencing increased financial issues such as food insecurity.
And now, on top of these already existing pandemic-related chronic stressors, many children and families may be overwhelmed with the added fear of sending their children to school–knowing that, today, 19 children and two teachers did not return home safely.
Thus, now, as I sit here to write. I realize I'm done. I don't want to write any more about how parents can talk to their children about school shootings. Since I first wrote about this in 2018, 119 school shootings have occurred in the United States of America. How many more children must die from the simple act of attending school, no less–before our society, our nation's leaders, and our country will stand up and do something more than merely give condolences in the ensuing weeks?
Parents don't need to be told how to talk to their children in the aftermath of mass shootings.
They need to be told, with truth and confidence, that their children can go to school without being shot and killed while learning their fractions.
References
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