An Aurora, Colo., police detective takes a statement from a young witness following a mass shooting early Friday that killed 12 people and injured dozens of others at a midnight movie. KARL GEHRING/The Denver Post/AP
Violence is a tough topic of conversation with children
Published: 7/24/2012 8:00 AM
Last Modified: 7/24/2012 8:19 AM
On Friday I was having a girls night out -- dinner and shopping -- with my 12-year-old. Like many preteens, she doesn't keep up with news, but she stays abreast of pop culture, so I had to ask if she had heard about the mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., early that day. I thought she might have read about it while browsing the Internet or heard about it through social media.
She hadn't heard, so I started to explain how a man dressed up in a sort of costume and opened fire on a crowd who had gone to watch a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" and killed at least a dozen people while shooting many more.
She asked a lot of questions -- who was he? why would he do this? who was killed? -- some of which I could answer with facts, many of which I could only speculate on.
Then we talked about some of the recent violence here in Tulsa. We live blocks away from the Best Buy where an apparent gang-related shooting took the lives of the intended target and a bystander who was inside the store with his daughter. We were at that store a week before the shooting on a Saturday afternoon to buy a charger for her iPod Touch.
And we talked about Kayla Ferrante, a 17-year-old Memorial High School graduate who was shot and killed in May while sitting in a car outside her house. We have friends in common, friends who knew Kayla and have been devastated by her death.
Her questions continued -- Why would someone do that? How will they find the shooter? What's going to happen?
Even when the questions stopped, I could still see the wheels spinning in her head.
Parents want to protect their child as long as they can, want to keep the evils of the world as far away as possible. But much of the effort can be in vain, as children learn about these incidents from the media, from the Internet, from friends. So instead of burying the facts, we need to talk about them. We need to give our children the tools to cope with the incomprehensible.
Kids ask a lot of questions, and they like to talk through experiences they don't understand. As parents, we need to answer the questions we can and provide a sounding board for their thoughts. We need to let them know that their concerns are important and that they can come talk to us -- or another trusted adult -- any time.
The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry offers suggestions on how to talk about community violence with your children here.
Tulsa World movie writer Michael Smith touched on the subject of parents and children responding to the violence in a column here last week.
It is important to remember that violence is a difficult concept, but when we let our children know that someone cares and is willing to listen to their feelings, it can go a long way toward their peace of mind.
Written by
Colleen Almeida Smith
Staff Writer
1 comments displayed
