For both adults and children, processing occurrences of mass tragedy and natural disaster is a sensitive, highly individual, complex, and usually lifelong process. As the greater Nashville community lives in the wake of Tuesday morning’s tornadoes, which devastated our city, and as we are barraged with media drawing our attention to injuries, deaths, destruction and trauma, many parents and caregivers wonder about how best to talk to or support their children.
Whether you and your children were directly or indirectly impacted by the tornado, you are most likely engaged in your own emotional response journey as you struggle to make sense of what happened, what to do next, and how to feel, as you simultaneously also try to support your child with their emotions. Adults often struggle to know what to say to children and vacillate between wanting to inform, empower or reassure their children and not wanting to overwhelm, scare, gloss over, or share more information than is necessary. The truth is that, in the aftermath of disaster— local or global— there is usually no roadmap or clear-cut set of guidelines; the best care adults can give children in the wake of shocking disaster is to attune to their individual child’s emotional state and cognitive understanding of the event, provide loving, nurturing presence and a safe space for emotional expression, and send the child the message that they are safe and that “we are in this together.”
Below are some basic stepping-stones and footholds for parents and caregivers treading this path with their children:
- Let children tell their story. The power of story is the cornerstone of trauma-informed care as well as an innately accepted cultural healing practice revered across centuries, communities and faith traditions. Use story as a simple, powerful way to help your child process their experience of the tornado, whether they experienced it in their neighborhood or saw it on TV. Give your child a simple prompt, such as “Tell me your story about the tornado.” Listen silently and attentively, without urgency or interruption, until they are done. Then, repeat back what you heard, demonstrating to the child that their story has been witnessed. Finally, it can be powerful to create an actual written or drawn product of the story, furthering the child’s ownership and processing (making the “scary thing” less scary by getting it out of their body and onto paper). Assist your child in writing their story, using their words and images. Afterwards (and only afterwards), you may choose to write and include your own story, creating a family “Our Story” booklet as a way for the whole family to heal as one. Mental health providers trained in child trauma can help your child with this process as part of deeper and more intensive trauma treatment.
- Use play and art. Children— especially very young children and/or unique learners for whom language is not always easy— benefit from expressing emotion through play and art. These can be great tools to gauge where their understanding or feelings may be that can then guide you to the next step. If you sense that the disaster is on your child’s mind, you may encourage her to draw a picture of her feelings or to draw or enact with toys the scary thing that happened or that he caught a glimpse of on the news channel. Keep a close eye on children’s art and play themes in the wake of tragedy; play that begins to include violence, death, storms or panic can indicate that your child is processing things they have experienced seen or heard. If you notice this, use it as a window for conversation with your child about how they are feeling and what they are wondering about.
- Use simple sentence stems. If your child asks questions about things they’ve seen in the news, tornado devastation that you drive by on your daily commutes, or things they’ve heard about, use sentence stems to gently probe and also help children identify their thoughts and feelings. These can also be used to start conversations and work well when you have a sense of how your child might be feeling but they have not expressed it to you. The best sentence stems speak in general terms because this language invites further conversation rather than closing it off.
- Some helpful stems include: “Some kids may feel _____ (scared, anxious, curious) when they see pictures of people’s ruined houses on the news.” Or, “Maybe you feel _____ (overwhelmed, confused, annoyed) when your classmates talk about the tornado”.
- Let your child respond, and don’t worry if they correct your “guess” at their feeling— this is great, because they are actually identifying their own feeling by negating the one you suggested, which is equally healthy.
- Use open-ended queries, such as “Have you been thinking about the tornado?” or “Is there anything scaring you about night time these days?” More than likely, children for whom fears or questions are present will express readily with even seemingly vague prompts like these because fearful thoughts tend to rest “close to the surface” in young children. If your child doesn’t express anything relevant, that’s equally valuable information— it lets you know that they either are unaware or are not ready to talk. Either way, you can then stop the conversation right there and re-inquire in a few days or a week.
- Avoid pushing if they’re not ready. Sometimes, adults may unconsciously push or question a child too much to talk or process in the wake of a tragedy out of a subconscious need for the adult to talk and express themselves. Be mindful of the true reason why you feel the urge to talk with your child about disaster and devastation: Are they scared and grieving, or are you scared and grieving? Both are totally valid and natural, but if the latter is true, take care of yourself first before pushing a child who may not be ready, or may not even understand, to converse with you. Great strategies for adults can include journaling or other written reflection, talking to a supportive friend, or talking with a counselor. Remember, it’s critically important for you as the caregiver to process your own thoughts and emotions about disaster and tragedies, too. Be mindful to avoid pushing this need onto children.
- Hold space when they are ready. When your child is ready to talk, it will usually come up spontaneously. They may ask you blunt and challenging questions that paralyze you as a caregiver or express big and even existential fears. The term “hold space” can sound like goofy jargon, but it is the best thing adults can do for children in these moments. The rhyme “presence, reflect, affirm, connect” provides four keystones for “holding space” for children when the big questions or emotional expressions come up:
- Presence - Take a deep breath. Orient your body toward your child, give them eye contact, and mirror their breathing and body language. It is okay to be silent for moments rather than following the impulse to respond or “fix” right away; the patient silence may give them space to express more.
- Reflect - Say back to the child what they have said to you. This can be a literal repetition of what they have said or a paraphrase. (“You’re wondering if this could happen again.”; “You feel scared that bad things happen out of nowhere.”; “You feel sad that people died.") Reflection doesn’t necessitate reassurance; it’s okay to simply restate and then continue to be silent and present at first.
- Affirm - Let the child know that what they have shared makes sense and is valid. You can say, “That makes sense.”; “Lots of people feel that way.”; “I feel that way too.”; “Everyone feels scared and sad”.
- Connect - Hug, cuddle or physically connect in some way with your child and breathe together. At this point, many adults feel the urge to reassure the child that everything is fine, and then simultaneously feel caught because they themselves may feel certain that everything is not fine— how do we speak both reassurance and realistic truth to our children? Take heart that that connection with you, the caregiver, in this moment— the physical and emotional qualities of the conversation— likely matter more than the actual words. The embodied safety the child feels when you hold space will have a profoundly more lasting impact on their healing than any brilliant speech you can give.
- Reassure safety and love. Remind your child of all the people that love them and all the things that they have in their life to keep them safe. Using concrete examples helps— for example, showing your child your home’s safe places or storm cellars, making a list of all the people that can love and protect your child at home and school for the child to hang by their bed, or talking through family safety plans and drawing safety maps. Always remind your child that they can talk with you anytime about their worries, sadness and fears.
- Help restore a sense of control. Large-scale natural disasters in our immediate community scares us in a deeply-rooted way because it makes the world around us feel out of control and unpredictable. Help counter this for your child by creating opportunities for them to feel control over their own life. This can include letting your child participate in creating family safety plans and maps; giving your child choices of when they wish to talk and not talk about scary things; letting your child dictate if and when the news is shown on TV at home; or other non-related expressions of self-efficacy and control over their own experiences, like trying new skills, deciding when to do things, asking for help and speaking up for their needs. If appropriate, you can encourage action or activism in older children, such as donating money, clothing and food as a family to local disaster relief efforts, volunteering as a family with local groups, or sending care packages and cards to students at local schools that were impacted. These things give children control, containment and a sense that their role matters when the world feels out of control.
A final note for parents: Children who have directly experienced witnessing and living through a tornado will benefit from trauma counseling to help them process and move forward healthily, as will their adult caregivers. Be proactive about your child’s and your own mental health by seeking the support of trauma-informed mental health professionals if your family was directly impacted. Additionally, some children may demonstrate a fixation or “perseveration” on disaster, tornadoes or death following exposure to disaster first hand or in the news. (Some children may also demonstrate this fixation even without any known exposure.) This can look like persistent high-level worry about disasters, weather or safety (repeated questioning, verbal worries or fears), or it can look like a seeming fascination with death, violence or destruction. In both instances, the true root is fear, and the child needs the right kind of support and healing attention. If you notice this pattern of interest or fixation in your child, connect with a mental health professional.
In the wake of natural disaster, people of all ages can feel lost, hopeless, angry, paralyzed, stunned, furious, numb, guilty, despairing and much more. Give yourself space and grace as you move through your own emotional process in the coming days. Surround yourself with loved ones; take time to breathe, rest, hug and look people in the eye; make conscious efforts to infuse your immediate world with people, images, words and places that communicate hope, strength, resilience and togetherness, rather than darkness, in the wake of disaster. Take heart that by showing up for your children, you are doing the work of love and safety each day— the greatest gift that you can give. Author Ram Dass says, of the human experience, “We’re all just walking each other home.” Caregivers give children the biggest gift possible by holding space for their feelings, assuring them of love, assisting them to express what needs to be expressed, and walking with them as they grow through the dark and light.
References/Further Reading:
“How to Talk to Kids About Difficult Subjects” by Caroline Knorr; publication of CommonSense Media: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-difficult-subjects?utm_source=Edu_Newsletter_2018_02_27&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly#
“How to Talk to Your Kids About Natural Disasters,” by Caroline Bologna: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-talk-to-your-kids-about-natural-disasters_n_5b9993d6e4b0cf7b004669c6
