I wasn’t planning on telling my 6 year old daughter about the shooting in CT. I think we all inherently want to protect our kids from things like this. I know I don’t want my daughter feeling unsafe in school.
It was brought to my attention when I was reading an article earlier today that whether we tell them or not, they are most likely going to hear something from someone about it. Some of the kids will have seen the news, heard about it on the radio. Or your school may intend to mention it and do safety drills this week.
Personally, I would rather something like that come from me.
So what do we tell them? How do we tell them? This article over at PBS.org has 6 great tips on speaking to your kids about situations like this. I found it helpful and thought I would share. I also think that simple quote from Mr. Rogers is very pertinent.
If you have suggestions or thoughts on this matter I would love to hear them.
Thank you for the share. I hav enot spoken to them, because I can’t get my head around it let alone answer their questions. My eldest heard about it at church today. So now we are talking. I personally work in elm. through high school (different school eery day). I hate this! teachers are so powerless to protect themselves and the students. I really think we need to give some of the power back to the classroom.
I didn’t tell my 5 year old about it, and she hasn’t mentioned anything about it. (If she HAD heard about it, I know she would have asked questions because she’s always concerned about others.) We just pulled her out of a school in October where she had been beaten, kicked, pushed, stabbed with pencils, etc by one little bully. The school refused to do anything about it because they claim they didn’t actually SEE it happen, and even went so far as to tell me that it’s not possible for a kindergartener to be a bully. My daughter didn’t feel safe at school, and would often fake illnesses and injuries in an effort to get me to keep her home – and away from the bully. (She also stopped eating, started having nightmares, and had some potty training regression.) She is just now settling into her new school and just now starting to feel safe. I had absolutely NO intention of telling her anything that would cause her to feel unsafe at school again.
Unfortunately, the Archdiocese (she is now in a Catholic school) decided that everyone in every school was to attend a prayer service the Monday after the shooting. I was LIVID!!!! I wrote both the principal and the Archdiocese to tell them that, while I realized that the victims and survivors needed our prayers, it was NOT their job to introduce my 5 year old to the concept of mass murders in schools. I didn’t receive a reply from either, but hopefully they will take into account the age and innocence of younger students before they do something like this again. I would have preferred to keep her in her little bubble, after all she went through with feeling unsafe at her last school, and kept her home from school until after the mandatory prayer service at school.