I started this article in the wake of the murder committed by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, yet didn’t like my final work, so I didn’t publish it. Unfortunately, in America, all one needs do is wait six weeks and there will be another horrific tragedy to write about. So instead of trying to get this one “just right,” I intend to get it done and put it out there, because parents need guidance about what to do in the wake of these calamities.
I’m going to start boldly and be very direct: young children – those younger than teenagers – should not be exposed to news about horrific events. (If your children have information already, I share some thoughts toward the end of the article about what you can do now.) The focus of this article is on why our young children need us to shelter them from tragic “news.”
Childhood innocence needs safeguarding
While some people believe children need to be “prepared” for the “real world,” the truth is that news of violence, catastrophe, and mayhem actually damages children and makes them less prepared to deal with travesties that do happen. Adults aren’t even truly emotionally equipped to “handle” news like that coming out of Vegas, so to think that young children should somehow be able to ingest this information and not be traumatized is pure folly.
Our children need us to help keep their innocence and trust in tact by creating “child-safe” space by doing the following (News in this context means the reporting of violent events such as the one that took place in Las Vegas as well as large-scale disasters or traumatic events.):
- Turn off news when children are in earshot.
- Stop discussing news when children are around, and interrupt any other adults who start talking about the news if the kids are present.
- Strictly control and monitor media that your children can access In our home this includes closing our computer windows so our daughter doesn’t accidentally happen to see something in our web browser or social media feeds.
- Maintain your own emotional equilibrium so you’re not in a perpetually overwhelmed state.
- Keep life as normal as possible.
- Shelter your children from other people who may not be as mindful as you are. This may include other family members, neighbors, friends, and school mates.
- Help your children learn how to protect themselves from receiving information they find distressing. There’s the practical stuff, like teaching them about physically moving away from a friend saying something they don’t want to hear or speaking up for themselves to say, “Please don’t talk about those things with me.”
What if you’re worried someone else will tell them first or they’ll hear it elsewhere?
One night during my daughter’s kindergarten year, she awoke from a bad dream. When I came to lie at her side, she was crying and telling me she was scared about she and I getting shot. I was flabbergasted and so disheartened. Eventually I learned that that day at school she’d learned that MLK had been shot and killed. I was very upset that she’d learned this in kindergarten. I spoke with her teachers the next day and found out that this had happened during a book reading session with the class and that it had been a mistake (Thankfully she attends a school that also honors the sanctity of childhood.). So, I couldn’t prevent her from learning this – nor can we prevent our children from learning many of the harsh realities of life. But I still wouldn’t have voluntarily told her about MLK at this age. She’s too young and I know it’s not the healthiest choice for her.
My daughter doesn’t know about Vegas. She goes to public school, she interacts with others. She might learn something about it, but I’m confident that she’s better off not being exposed to it intentionally by me. But what if your children have learned about the events in Las Vegas or another tragic event?
What do you do if your children have learned about a tragic event?
If your child has learned about Las Vegas (or some other horrific event), there are things you can do to help them process that information and heal from any trauma.
- Find out what they heard and believe so you have a clear understanding of what their “reality” is.
- Empathize with any feelings they’re having about what they’ve heard.
- Clear up misunderstandings in as simple and age-appropriate way as possible. Continuing my MLK example from earlier, my daughter didn’t have any incorrect info, so I mostly empathized with her fears, assured her that we were safe, and said it was a tumultuous time.
- Ask if they have questions and answer just the questions they actually have. The comparison is that if your child asks you were babies come from, you don’t launch into telling them about relationships, intercourse, et cetera. You could say that babies grow inside women’s wombs, or that babies grow from a sperm and egg which come from a man and woman.
- Remind your child of the overall peacefulness, calm, and safety of the real world. Yes, I know there are many “bad” things that happen, yet many, many more “good” things happen every day. You can talk about what you’re grateful for, how life is going well, and generally happy and love-infused events. Basically, turn their attention back to what else is true even though this horrifying thing happened.
- Help raise the awareness of others with whom your children interact regularly so that they too might begin being more mindful about what they’re exposing your child to.
A sheltered childhood is a good thing
Though I know not all children are so lucky, I still believe all children deserve to have a sheltered childhood. They deserve — though many do not get it and some adults even think it unwise — to have their innocence, wonderment, and faith protected from the aspects of life that can unsettle, shock, terrify, or depress us.
Healing the underlying causes of the Las Vegas incident (the violence, hatred, division, pathology, hyper-masculinity, et cetera) is not the work of children. We adults must take the responsibility for this, and shelter our children so that will be strong enough when they become adults to deal with the challenges that remain to be handled. By dealing with adult issues ourselves, we allow young kids to focus their energies on the problems they can appropriately solve. As they master age-appropriate conflicts in their lives, they develop confidence and competence that will prepare them for the next level of real-life challenges they’ll encounter. Bit by bit they’ll learn what they need to know to tackle the big problems (and if we adults start doing more of our part, we might even knock a few problems off the list so the next generation won’t have to clean up after us).
“Toughening” up our boys and girls doesn’t prepare them, it breaks them. Are children are born connected to Source/God/Spirit and know only love. Living in our imperfect world, they will lose some of that connection. By safeguarding their innocence, we help that faith live longer in our children’s hearts. We also give them more time to learn skills of critical thinking that can help them guard against the weaknesses of cynicism, apathy, and withdrawal that keep so many adults from exercising their own power in peaceful and loving ways to change the course of our culture.