Parents can help children cope with the news of another school shooting
MIAMI - It's been four days since the tragic and senseless shooting at a Nashville school in which six people died, including three children.
Dealing with yet another school shooting never gets any easier, especially considering the young age of some of the victims.
Pediatric psychologist Natasha Poulopoulos said it may take children a couple of days to a few weeks to process what happened, so now could be a good time to check in and have a conversation with them. But keep in mind a child's age.
"Younger than age eight, we really want to consider if they've had any exposure, to the media or peers talking about the school shooting. If not, I would recommend under age eight not to bring this up unless exposed, then in that case you want to first ask kids what they know that way you can correct any misinformation," she said.
"Also, what do you say in these shootings especially when the victims are so young, or the person who did this is a student? With younger kids you definitely want to have a script ready, with little kids, like one sentence, something like someone did something really bad and they hurt a lot of kids," she added.
Poulopoulos said while it's important to keep the conversation age appropriate, sometimes kids will hear about very lurid details. So what happens if they bring this up?
"So for the young kiddos, we're talking like around age 8 to 12, school age, I'd be really mindful about being honest and if you don't have an answer, just say you don't know. A lot of kids may ask so why would someone do this? So it's okay to say we don't know why someone did this but we know they hurt a lot of people," she said. "Start to give the rhetoric around how they're responding to the incident emotionally rather than the incident itself."
Poulopoulos said a lot of people have opinions about how to prevent future school shootings, but the facts remain.
"So the facts are, guns are the leading cause of death of kids in the US, and this definitely a problem particularly in the US. Those are the facts, and another fact is stricter gun laws do save lives, and they lead to fewer incidents like this," she said.
In order to help children understand and process what happened, parents and guardians should first make sure that they are doing okay and then have an open and honest discussion. If you don't know something, say we don't know or understand at this time.
It may be helpful to have the child find a way to express what their feeling, by writing a letter or drawing a picture. Also, give them emotional support throughout their daily routine and limit exposure for younger children.