July 23, 2012
“When the world feels loud, we must be quiet. When the world feels violent, we must be peaceful. When the world seems evil, we must be good.” – Glennon Melton, parenting blogger at momastery.com
The tragic shooting in Colorado last week has many parents scrambling to figure out how to talk about it with their children. A sidebar has been the many public conversations about parenting choices and children going to the movies.
We want to support open, safe dialogue between parents as well as within families as we struggle to understand what a traumatic event means in our own lives. It’s never easy to explain why something like this happens, and it can seem impossible to answer the questions of children when we ourselves can’t seem to make sense of it all. We suggest visiting the Helping Children Deal with Trauma page on our Parent Resource Center (we provide a fact sheet in English and Spanish—perfect for sharing with others, too.)
Some fantastic articles have popped up over the weekend to help parents begin the conversation about the event in Colorado, and we thought we would share:
- List of tips from local experts via Children’s Hospital Colorado: How to Talk to Your Kids About Aurora’s Movie Theater Shooting
- Great examples of language parents can use from child development author/blogger Betsy Brown Braun on Huffington Post: The Aurora Shooting: How To Talk To Kids About What Happened In Colorado
- Overview of incident and thoughts from child psychologists at ABCNews.com: Batman, Kids and Aurora: How to Talk to Children About the Colorado Movie Theater Shooting
- Down-to-earth blog post and ongoing conversation between parents on parenting blog Babble.com: Talking to kids about tragedy: Will you discuss the Colorado shootings with your children?
Have another resource to share with families? Please post in the comments section below and keep the conversation going…