Talking with Younger Children about Violent News Events

[Dr. Janine Domingues]: So what does that mean for us as trusted adults?As parents what can we do to mitigate some of these factors? The very first thing is really touching base with yourself – how do we turn down the intensity of how we’re feeling, what we’re thinking when we are bombarded by a lot of this media coverage and news, and modeling coping for our children. So that doesn’t mean that we whitewash and say everything is okay but as we talk about how maybe angry and sad we feel, we’re doing it in a way that’s contained and also modeling an appropriate way of discussing some of those emotions starting with school age children. So really, school age is where they are on the playground. They’re with friends. They might be getting this information from other resources and other – other places and so really you want to be the first person to start the talk about about the events, start the talk about the conversation. So that way you can be t he filter for what they’re hearing. You can be the creator of that narrative, and also be the one who’s giving accurate information as well. You want to start small, especially for school-aged young children, and have them lead the discussion by asking – by having them ask questions to you. And you really want to pace the conversation – so with my six-year-old son, you know, last week the conversation with us started by me saying “You know I’m feeling sad and angry because there were children who got really badly hurt and killed at a school in Texas and I just opened up the conversation in that way and he his first question was “Where’s Texas?” So that’s where he was at in that conversation. So you don’t want to always assume you know where your kids are going to go with it and you really want to pace that for them.