How to Talk with Kids About World Events

 

Let’s talk about what is going on in the world from a bigger standpoint, and how to talk to our kids about tricky things.

 

This last week, it’s May of 2022 at the time of this recording, a tragedy occurred in Texas, another school shooting. And it hurts my heart so much to think of the families affected, the parents, the friends of the children, the community, and how to talk to our kids about these kinds of things. I want to give you some practical tips you can apply, and if you aren’t on my email newsletter, go to my website, danielle vaughn coaching dot com, and sign up so you can receive the printables and the scripts and PDF’s I share with my subscribers. I try to pack my emails with usable tools you can apply - - I’m really intentional about that. 

 

My goal is to give you some strategies, even some question prompts and scripts  to work through with your kids to help them build some resilience skills and distress tolerance, and some connection with you when they are faced with world events that are sad. 

 

I’m just so passionate about helping prepare children to be emotionally resilient, especially during hard times. And I love helping you show up in your parenting and giving you practical solutions to questions you might have, the actual words you can say to start meaningful conversations that build closeness and some resiliency .

 

I’m going to speak to this today in the context of the school shooting that happened in Texas, and how when these things happen, it can really rock our world, as it should, I don’t ever want these kinds of tragedies to become so commonplace in our heads and our hearts, that we are dismissive about them, or we don’t take the time to process the humanity of it. 

 

I also want to speak to these kinds of events with my children, in an age appropriate way, in an effort to do my part as a parent to prepare them for the world we live in, people making terrible choices that cause pain to other people, but also speaking to this not to frighten my kids, but to help them process it in such a way where I’m the safe space for them to land when they’re trying to make sense of it. Some children will try to understand these bigger things at earlier ages than others. And so how to know when and how to talk to our children? I’m going to speak to some strategies you can apply immediately. 

 

Strategy #1 -  Big picture, zoom out: ask yourself what you are trying to do with your kids as far as helping them understand the world and other people?

 

We’re parenting for the long run. What are we setting the tone for in our parenting? Are we setting a precedent of being able to hold space for the truth, for not sugar coating things even though it might mean some discomfort, are we trying to protect our kids or shelter them from some of those more serious discussions, or do we have the comfort inside of ourselves to talk about any topic that presents itself, whether on the news, or something our kids overhear at school with friends or from teachers? What is the message your child has internalized as far as safety with any topic? And that doesn’t mean we talk to our five year olds the same way we talk to our twelve year olds, but when our kids are 22 and eventually 52, whether we’re talking about their world views, and what they’re willing look at, I hope they will build the comfort inside of themselves to face and talk about the hard things, not avoid it or tell themselves that if it’s uncomfortable, it should be avoided. 

 

I want them to be able to look truth in the eye, and then make conscious choices about what they’re going to do when faced with the truth. 

 

Right now, what that looks like is to prepare my kids for hard truths. Inconvenient truths. So how to do this: 

 

Skill - start with framing the conversation. And it can sound like, “hey I want to talk about such and such. . .” in this case, “I want to talk about what happened in Texas at a school, have you heard about it at all?” 

 

And I’m just checking in, trying to find out what they’ve heard, and letting them know that this isn’t going to be a typical conversation about their friends or grades, but something different, and preparing the conversation for something that’s a little uncomfortable to talk about, both for me, and for my child. Just creating space that says, “hey, in our family it’s ok to talk about hard things that happen and let’s have a conversation about it.” 

 

Strategy #2 - Take their temperature, their emotion temperature. Observe how they take in people and things around them. Are they aloof and light-hearted? Are they sensitive and ask questions that cause you to dig deeper for answers yourself? 

 

My kids, I have a range of both types of kids, some are deep thinkers and highly sensitive, others are aloof and in their own world and don’t notice what’s going on as much with other people. You’ll be able to tell based on how they are with the media they take in, for instance, when one of my children watched the movie Bambi, he hated the ending, he was agitated when the forest caught fire and he came and sat on my lap and wanted me to hold him. This doesn’t mean he is a baby. It means he’s aware, and that he has a high level of alertness and can sense the implications of danger and wants everyone to be okay. 

 

So being observant with our kids, being able to detect where they are at, and then checking in with them and asking them questions like, “So, in the Ukraine, there are some hard things going on right now, Russia invaded the country of Ukraine, and I’m just curious what you’ve heard about that.” 

 

If my child is like, ”I don’t know what that is, what are you talking about?” I’m not going to push it and turn on the news and show them the bombed areas and the lines of refugees, but I’m going to provide a foundation to have the conversation by asking questions, checking in, and taking their emotional temperature on the topic. We want to prepare our kids for the conversation. 

 

You can say, “this might feel a little sad, or heavy, or not fun to talk about,” and then just check in about the basics - what have they heard, and how are they feeling about it so far? Knowing those two things is foundational for building some resiliency around the hard things kids face in the world. 

 

Strategy #3 - take your emotional temperature. It’s important to be able to assess your ability to talk comfortably about the hard things that come up in the news and with world events. 

 

The opposite of this would be saying things to our children like:

• “Don’t worry about it, you’re young, you probably won’t ever have to face something like that,” or
• That won’t ever happen to us  here where we live, 

 

If you’re wanting to say those kinds of things, you might have a low tolerance for feeling sad. 

 

The truth is, We don’t want to be dismissive about things that are going on in the world that are kids are going to hear about, especially their fears. We don’t have to feed into them either though. And so what that sounds like is saying something like, “hey - they just talked about such and such on the news, I noticed you were listening, what did you think of that?” and getting really curious about what your child heard and what they thought about it, even if you don’t really want to talk about it, but talking about it anyway because you know in the long run, you’d rather connect to your child versus disconnect. 

 

If a child is exposed to something that is scary and causes a lot of uncertainty, they need the adult to be grounded and to be with them in that experience, not to take them out of the experience and be dismissive or brush it aside like it’s not a big deal. 

 

We can develop this skill as the parent, the skill of coaching our child through the emotion they are experiencing in the present, it doesn’t mean they will stay stuck in that emotion or that your child will grow up anxious and afraid, in fact the opposite is more true - children grow up more confident when adults take the time to be with them in the present moment and can hold space for the fear or uncertainty and allow children to talk through it, ask questions, and gain a sense of safety from that conversation. 

 

If our children are exposed to difficult news, or phrases, and you know your child hears about a shooter who killed twenty people in an elementary school, one of them was a teacher, and your child is asking you questions about it, - - it’s going to be so helpful to prepare yourself for those conversations as much as possible in advance. 

 

Ask yourself what you would say if: and think through what you might say. This is strategy #3, and I’ve learned to do this over the years, starting with first, hurricane Katrina, and then the terrorist attacks from 911. 

 

Now one thing to keep in mind in all of this: it isn’t so much the event that is traumatic to kids, what is traumatic is the possibility of going through it all alone and not knowing how to handle the emotions that the event might cause. So, what is more scary to a child than anything else, is  processing the overwhelming emotion all alone - that can be more scary than the actual event. 

 

Kids get overwhelmed if they feel alone with a scary emotion. And that’s where you come in, you connect to the scary emotion too, and then the child isn’t as overwhelmed. 

 

Children are trying to make sense of safety in the world when they hear about scary events. Their coping skills parts of their brains are still developing, and they can get really flooded or overstimulated when they see something or hear something scary. So we as adults, we need to be aware of what they are aware of. And if we feel comfortable broaching the subject, that can be so comforting to our kids. 

 

Strategy #4  - - try to notice how your kids are taking in other people’s stories, how they are processing the stories they read from books, or tv shows, or movies, notice how they are thinking about those stories and the people in them. 

 

I have one child who doesn’t show emotion. When they watch movies, it can be hard to know what this particular child is thinking, and I’ve had to learn to become really good at asking questions: I say things like, 

 

“Hey, what did you think about how the superhero is the hero of the world, but still feels alone?” or 

 

“I noticed you weren’t scared when everyone got eaten by the dinosaurs, I was totally scared in that movie, what was it like for you?” 

 

And so probe and ask questions and get the conversation going. The more you can do this to get to know your child, the more aware you can be, the better. Those kinds of conversations build upon each other over time. 

 

Then, when things happen in real life, you already have a level of understanding with knowing how your child is taking in the stories they see unfolding around them. 

 

When we can talk about fiction stories, and we can create language and build vocabulary to feelings, and that enhances our ability to talk about the human experience,  so we can build  our children’s ability to talk about the real world. 

 

We can sit at the dinner table and talk about when a child doesn’t get asked to the dance, how disappointing or sad that felt, and we can connect over the human experience, versus avoiding discomfort. This is so important as parents, we build the safety to be able to do this. 

 

So a good question to ask yourself: How does our family talk about difficult things? Things that are uncomfortable? Are we able to tolerate the distress of things, or do we avoid those kinds of topics because we don’t want to be uncomfortable? 

 

Because, again, our goal is to set up a context of safety about the hard things that happen in the world. 

 

Some kids are more sensitive than others. You’ll want to be in tune and sensitive to your child’s sensitivity. 

 

How to know their readiness? To start, you can say, “I want to talk about this thing that happened, and I’m going to ask some questions, and we’ll just go from there.” And so using the cues your child gives you to know how to proceed. Some kids will be unaware, and not know what you’re even talking about. You’ll want to keep the conversation more broad if so. And say, “it sounds like you haven’t heard about this, that’s fine, we can talk about it down the road if it comes up again.” Another child might ask questions, and that’s when we as the parent can get really uncomfortable. 

 

But I want to offer to you that questions are your biggest clue to the fact that your child is already trying to make sense of the world around them, they are considering how to fill in the blanks. And we don’t want to leave our children on their own to fill in those blanks, we want to help them feel connected to us and prepare them for the time when they will be processing the world around them when you aren’t present, when you aren’t there to answer the questions. 

 

Their ability to find things out and answer the questions that come up will depend on how we show them the ability to find truth, how we equip our children with finding answers. 

 

With my own kids, I want to be the first one in on so many tricky topics, like pornography, murder, warcrimes, something in the news that is sad or tragic. 

 

“When you go to school today, you might hear about such and such . . . there’s so much I could say about what happened, but what I want you to know is that there is going to be some hard things to hear, some of it will be true, some of it might not be true, it’s a pretty awful thing that happened, and I wanted to let you know so that you are prepared, but I wanted to let you know that I’m happy to answer any questions you have now that you know what happened and what’s going on.“

 

And then trust your kid, maybe they want to keep talking, or maybe they don’t want to talk anymore. But trust your child with what they’re comfortable talking about or not quite ready for. 

 

So you’re building a child’s tolerance for handling distress and uncertainty. 

 

We’re helping them know they don’t have to feel those things alone. 

 

This is what we want from our own friends and loved ones as adults. If something sad happens, like a miscarriage, or a parent dies, we don’t want to go through those things alone. We want someone to show up for us by calling or acknowledging the pain. If we felt like we were all alone, it would be so much harder. It feels awful to be left alone when we’re suffering. 

 

And when kids hear something in the world that happens and they are worried or scared about it, or trying to imagine the suffering of the people who are experiencing it, we want to be the role models for them of what it means to be humane, to ease suffering, to feel the feelings, and honestly, the better we get at this in our own homes, the less tragedies we’ll have to face collectively because the empathy that is developed from unnecessary suffering can be a huge teacher in a child’s life without them having to actually experience the tragedy, they will learn that they don’t want to cause another human’s suffering. 

 

But if we are overprotecting our children from these kinds of conversations, we are doing a disservice to our children in not preparing them for the world they live in. 

 

We don’t have to be pushy or overbearing, we just don’t want to ignore or gloss over the hard things when they come up. 

 

Children can handle sad feelings. I know it’s hard to see our children hurt. But they can handle it. And they are looking to us to learn how to handle it. 

 

So not being dismissive, but just showing up, and being able to tolerate the sad things that happen. 

 

The thing that makes hard feelings feel even worse is the disconnection or the aloneness that can occur. Aloneness happens when feelings are invalidated, or judged, or dismissed, or when shame is layered on top of the initial feeling. 

 

We have a feeling that comes up inside of us, and then we have a reaction to that feeling.

 

That’s really all that is happening anytime we are experiencing an emotion. 

 

And if we are met with a loving, compassionate, accepting presence, it can be such a gift. And so it can soften the harder reactions that can come up inside our bodies and intensify a difficult emotion. That’s the skill we want to offer to our kids when they experience an uncomfortable emotion, we want the reaction inside their bodies to be held in a loving space that is grounded. 

 

This all goes back to how you talk about sad things or things that make you angry. 

 

We want our kids to be able to handle the emotion of sadness. Or anger. Or injustice. We are the ones who are helping them make sense of those emotions. 

 

Let’s prepare ourselves and our children with the skill of managing feelings versus avoiding or dismissing. 

 

The hard thing that can come up for us as parents is to see a child’s innocence taken away from them, through the news or world events that open their eyes. But we can see those events when they present themselves as opportunities for growth and resilience in processing emotions in a healthy way as we connect to their pain and their discomfort. Helping them understand they aren’t alone, we are their partners in making sense of the world and holding space for the scary things. 

 

Distress tolerance is a skill that can be difficult to acquire. A few tips on how to build this skill: 

 

• AVP, and I learned this from Becky Kennedy, a doctor of psychology for children. It stands for Acknowlege, Validate, then Permission. 
• Feelings don’t want to made better, they just want to be seen. Just like we want to be seen. Let’s say you’ve had a bad day, and soon your husband will come home, and he has no idea how hard your day was, but you just really want to not be grumpy. The best way to not be grumpy, is to let yourself be grumpy first. We do this by: 
• First, acknowledge. Just take notice. I notice I feel really grumpy right now. I have a tightness in my chest. My face feels flush. So it isn’t fancy, you’re just noticing and naming and acknowledging what’s going on for yourself. You can do this for your child too, it’s so powerful. 
• The next step is Validation - the process of telling your feeling why it makes sense. It makes sense why I’m grumpy. And you give yourself permission to see how the day was hard, two kids were sick, you changed bedding three times, you skipped lunch and your blood sugar is low, of course it makes sense why I’m grumpy. So validating the emotion. It makes sense that I’m feeling. . . I actually don’t like to ever tell myself or anyone else for that matter that their feelings don’t make sense. Most of us are more aware of our feelings before we’re aware of the reasons or thoughts that are creating them. So of course it makes sense that our feelings are valid - - if we invalidate them, they will fight even harder to stay. 
• And then permission: give our body permission to feel what we are feeling. Feelings explode out of us if we try to hold them back, they become disregulated. That’s when we yell, we explode, we punch a wall, that happens if we haven’t given ourselves permission to be sad, angry, those feelings will explode out of us. So how to regulate with our kids? If we are building distress tolerance: you tell them they are allowed to feel upset, alone, sad, angry. This helps our kids see we aren’t scared of their feelings. We don’t have to be in a hurry to make them feel better or different. We speak to their emotion and tell them it’s okay to feel what they are feeling. And ironically, once you speak to that, the emotion processes through quicker, it won’t fight hard to be there or go into hiding or go underground. Kids are smart. They can sense if you are uncomfortable with their big emotions. If you truly believe you can handle your kids disappointment, sadness, feelings of low self-esteem, they will learn they can handle their own emotions. You do this by saying, “you’re upset right now, you’re worried people will think you are stupid,” or “you feel sad right now, you have every right to be sad, I’m sad too, let’s be sad together right now. What does sad feel like to you? For me, it feels like a tightness in my throat, and my eyes are getting watery. . . “ the more you can do this with your child, the better they will build their distress tolerance. 
• AVP - acknowledge, validation, and permission. 

 

Another thing we can remember is that we can bring it back to ourselves: if we were learning how to play piano, and we were only surrounded by concert pianists, we are going to feel terrible about ourselves when we’re learning. But in terms of a concrete strategy, mess up in front of your kids, speak to how you mess up sometimes and it’s ok, and how it’s normal to be frustrated when there’s so many times you fail and have to try again. 

 

We can say, “oh my goodness, I messed up this recipe. . . I guess I need to keep working at it, I need to keep practicing.” I’ve been practicing how to flip an omelet like Julia Child, I like to show my kids my failures and my successes, it’s good for them to see the adults in their lives trying new things and messing up. I think letting our kids see that we can handle failures and mess ups and that can help them build their own distress tolerance with all the things they are having to learn and make sense of in the world. 

And so those are the strategies I have for you today, 

When our kids hear about world events,  we can help them hold the scary things, we are giving our kids an amazing gift of self belief - that when I’m scared, I can find answers, I can handle the distress I feel in my body,” those kinds of beliefs are a huge gift. 

 

Ok, I hope this gives you some useful information and strategies on how to talk to your kids about world events. It doesn’t matter how old or how young your children are, you can implement these strategies today. For more tips on other strategies that parents need, sign up for the newsletter here