It’s needless to say that I’m upset about gun violence. Buffalo was senseless, and how an 18-year-old person could just walk into a gun shop on his 18th birthday and buy 2 assault rifles with high capacity magazines is beyond me and it has me feeling helpless, hopeless, and angry. Then I think about young people… who are bombarded with humanity’s horrors on platform after platform in a constant cycle. The trauma they are taking in, the poisonous words and imagery is beyond my comprehension… and possibly theirs.
So how do we talk to young people about what’s going on? How do we support them in processing the traumatic information so that it neither exacerbates the trauma nor desensitizes them to the empathy we need to not only move on but to heal and grow and make this world better.
I’ve come across some really great resources from the Child Mind Institute, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and a few other online sources that offer advice on how to talk to children about school shootings, and trauma in general. I hope you find them useful. And I hope you’ll join me in setting our intentions towards peace.
https://www.vumc.org/health-wellness/news-resource-articles/coping-reactions-school-shootings
https://childmind.org/article/helping-children-cope-frightening-news/
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-school-shootings