When Bad Things Happen

The cycle of difficult and challenging things happens in our communities and in our country on a regular basis. Be that natural disasters, political upheaval or personal tragedies. Many of these events may bring up big feelings for your children and emotional responses for the adults in your family. 

Teaching Tolerance published this article back entitled When Bad Things are Happening  in 2018. The organization suggests a four step process based on the Psychological First Aid program developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Listen, Protect, Connect, Model and Teach. The article was written specifically to support teachers but Psychological First Aid is easily adapted to discussing difficult topics within families. 

One thing I have learned is that making space to discuss difficult topics is important. Allowing space for your child to express how they are feeling and then making sure they are safe (the Listen and Protect part of the Psychological First Aid) is really helpful for young people to process what is happening in the world. Many of our students may not want to talk about what is happening in the news or are too young to know and that is just fine- no need to bring up a difficult topic if your child doesn’t need or want to discuss it.  For some of your children, making sure there is space for a discussion at home might help alleviate fears or misunderstandings. Helping to model calm and provide for family opportunities for positive action can be really helpful for some kids. The last thing is to make sure you are taking care of yourselves. This can be really hard for many of us but trying to make space even for a quiet minute to yourself can be helpful.