How do you talk to your children about the school shooting in Texas when you don’t have a clear solution? 

Another one. We’re feeling shocked and deflated. While we can’t believe this is happening again, how can they when regulations don’t change?  

There’s a tinge of anger and resentment – let’s just keep traumatizing our kids with lockdown drills while gun control or lack thereof stays the same. While mental health support or lack thereof stays the same. 

As we grapple with the realities of American life – that our children are in potential danger when they go to school, we also have to figure out how we can relay strength and resilience to our kids. 

Honesty with calm is the best policy.

• Take care of your feelings first before talking to your kids about what happened yesterday.  Take deep breaths and process the fact that life continues to happen in the ways it does no matter how hard we try to control its outcomes. 

• Tell your children if you prefer that they hear the news from you instead of their teachers or classmates, but limit their viewing of the news. 

• Explain to your child in basic terms what happened and if you don’t have an answer like why would someone do such a thing, it’s okay to say I don’t know. 

• Use this moment as a time to hold your child’s feelings of uncertainty, sadness, grief, and fear about this situation and any others that may come up. 

• Some children may hear you and brush it off and process it later while some may feel this more deeply instantaneously and get really sad and cry about it. 

• Don’t be alarmed or afraid of your child’s feelings. Instead, pay attention and hear them out. How they process news like this says a lot about your child’s coping skills. Some children lean more towards empaths than others. Some children rather keep their feelings in and act like it’s no big deal, even if it is. 

• Don’t judge their reactions. 

• Check in on them but don’t hover over them. 

• Check in with your anxiety and sadness or any other feelings you may have as you’re dealing with the news.

• Some of us may be triggered by this event because it brings up other losses or fears related to losing someone we care deeply for. It may bring up memories of other school shootings.

• It may be difficult for you to feel great about other things happening today while your thoughts are with the mourning families.

• You may feel more frustrated when minor things don’t go your way today as you grapple with the current reality that what we want is to feel safe and secure to send our children to school and to be a part of a society that doesn’t foment mass killings anywhere, let alone in a vulnerable, innocent environment. Take today easy on yourself as you hear the news and bear witness to the families’ grief and anguish.