Talking to Kids About the News and Current Events

Lynn Smith: Your child is looking at you with big eyes, expecting you to answer some of life's toughest and most complex questions. In these moments, it's normal to want to protect your kids from things that are scary or confusing, and you may be tempted to downplay it or avoid the conversation altogether. The reality is they will likely hear about it, one way or another. It's important that they're able to talk about it openly with you. You don't have to have all the answers, but starting a conversation is the first step and it's one big intimidating step.

Today, I'm welcoming Jody Baumstein back to the show. Jody is a licensed mental health therapist from the Children's Strong4Life team. Jody is a respected resource on the topic of helping parents navigate challenging conversations with their kids. Jody, welcome back. It's so good to have you here. We've talked about doing this episode for quite some time, but it always is laced with this twinge of hopefully we don't need an episode like this. The reality is we're here. Scary things happen, whether it's in our hometowns or around the world, and parents often feel pressured to respond or address this with their kids because they're seeing it out there and they want to get clarity on how to have those conversations. What's your first piece of advice when it comes to how to address tragedy with children?

Jody Baumstein: the first piece is acknowledging that we're humans, too. We can't be robots and just jump into these conversations. We need a minute, and I think that people need to hear that you have permission to take a beat when we are faced with this heaviness. We're dysregulated ourselves. We're not even thinking clearly, so to think about sitting down with kids and trying to make meaning and process it with them, it's not really a fair expectation for us. I think just giving people permission to really take a pause, notice what you are feeling, recognize that is totally valid and okay, and then, as much as possible, trying to regulate yourself.

We're never going to be fully calm because these things are scary, period, but we do want to strike a sweet spot. It's okay and even beneficial for kids to see adults having emotions because then they know it's okay for them, too. However, we don't want to be so dysregulated that they now feel they need to care for us because that then creates more anxiety for them. They feel like they're in a caretaking position and they need to comfort us.

Lynn Smith: It's like when you're on an airplane, if you see the stewardess is calm, then you're not freaking out. It's the same in parenting. I love that you say, wait until you are at least somewhat calm because it's impossible in some of these tragedies. What about some of the questions that we don't really have answers? As parents, we don't have the answer to how someone could be capable of a horrific act or things like that.

Jody Baumstein: There is this acceptance that we will not have an answer to every question that they ask. I know that feels uncomfortable, but I think once we accept that, it's a little bit freeing to know I won't have all the answers and it's okay. They don't need us to have these magic words that don't exist, by the way. They don't need a perfect response. What they need is help and support navigating through it.

It doesn't require us to come up with all these perfect answers to complicated questions. There's also an element of taking the pressure off of ourselves by acknowledging before we even go into the conversation, there's no way I will have an answer for everything. Also, giving yourself an out on the front end that there might be certain things that catch me off guard. It's okay to also let your child know, “That's really complicated. I need to think about that one for a minute,” or “You know what, let's talk about that,” or “Let's look it up together,” but always giving yourself grace to not be perfect because nobody can be.

Lynn Smith: It is impossible to be perfect. What about some ways to start the conversation? Sometimes that can be the hardest place. You feel somewhat ready, but you're worried you're going to say the wrong thing.

Jody Baumstein: What I think is a great entryway into the conversation is asking what they know because we have no idea what's on their mind. What might be top of mind for us, it might not even be on their radar. Asking what they know is going to be a great way to start the conversation because then you are getting a bit of a pulse check on what information they have, what's on their mind, what concerns they have.

You're asking that question and then you're sitting back and listening to what are they saying, what are they not saying, but they're maybe showing you with their nonverbals. Are they fidgety? Are they tearful? Are they having trouble making eye contact? This really sets you up for the rest of the conversation because you're not dumping your own worries onto them. You're letting them tell you and then they get to guide it from there.

Lynn Smith: I struggle with when's the right age to start having those conversations. My kids don't watch the news, but I don't know what they're hearing in school. When do you know is the right time to begin that first conversation of, “Hey, have you heard of something really bad that happened?” What's that right age?

Jody Baumstein: It won't surprise you to know I'm not going to give an exact age because it depends on the child's development and what they're capable of handling. What we can say is that if they don't know and aren't going to be exposed in some way, there's really no reason to bring it up and add fear. A toddler, for instance, if they're not going to be exposed to it, there's really no reason to bring this up with them. It's just going to cause anxiety and be unnecessary.

Lynn, you said something important. What are they hearing at school? For kids who are older and not with you every second of the day, there is the possibility they're being exposed—whether it's kids talking about it on the bus or somebody mentioning it at school. That's where we do want to make sure we are getting ahead of it and having a conversation because we don't want them to be left alone putting the pieces together and trying to make sense of it. So, the answer to the question is if there's any possibility they're exposed, we want to have a conversation.

Lynn Smith: You might have two different age groups, like a teen and a younger child. What is your advice on how to communicate when that's the case in your household? When you can't have a big conversation that you have with your teen with your 4 year old?

Jody Baumstein: This is going to happen in a lot of households. I'm glad that you asked. We want to make sure that we are thinking about the youngest child and what's appropriate for them. That means that not just our conversations need to be appropriate, but even what's on the screens in the home.

Your older child might want to be informed, but we don't want that on the TV in the family room while younger kids are present. It means setting some hard limits on the fact that we can be informed, but we need to do this maybe after the youngest one has gone to sleep. Maybe there is a screen that you and your teenager use during nap time or something else, but there really does need to be a clear limit because we know that even if we're not engaging the younger ones in conversation, they're absorbing everything. They're hearing us. They're watching things on screen. Make sure that you are thinking about the youngest one. What's appropriate for them should be the general conversation. Anything beyond that, letting your older kids and teens know you want them to be informed, you want to talk to them, but there's a time and a place.

 

 

Lynn Smith: What about in the case, and this is more possible than ever before, that they're getting misinformation out there? How can you provide some of that clarity for them?

Jody Baumstein: We should assume that they will receive information that's not fully or even at all accurate, at some point. I think it's a good practice to get ahead of something like this as they're starting to consume information, and they're starting to see more things. Talking to them ahead of time about the fact that everything they read is not going to be a fact. Everything that they see isn't going to come from a credible source.

There's also this piece, which can be really important, which is to get on their level and join with them so that they don't feel like, “Here's the adult telling me what to do and making me feel like I don't know anything.” Even acknowledging only if it feels genuine to you. “This was something I had to learn over the years. There were times where I just believed something because I heard it. I realized a few weeks later that it was totally false, so I've had to learn this, too. Here's how I've gone about kind of fact checking.”

Walking them through that and humanizing yourself for them to see that you haven't always had the answers either, but you can figure it out together. When they're not sure, they can come to you. You can look into it with them, so they don't feel like they're on their own with it.

Lynn Smith: I don’t have a teen, but my friends that have them say it's impossible to get them to talk. They won't open up. This is the case with my 7 year old. I try and have a conversation to feel out if he's heard of something that's in the news. He says, “No, mom,” and he runs away. What do you do when your kids don't seem like they want to talk?

Jody Baumstein: Well, a couple things here. One, we are tempted to force it. We have to talk about this, but we also know that backfires. The only way we're really going to have a productive conversation with a child, or anyone for that matter, is if there is safety. Forcing someone to talk is really the opposite of that. Instead, we want to think about how do I create an environment and a safe space for them to want to talk to me. We can't force that. It means striking up a conversation and sitting back and giving them the choice to decide if they want to engage or not. Our responsibility is to reach out and open a dialogue, but they get the choice. “Do I want to take the bait or not?”

What we're not going to do is do it one time and that's the end of the story. We need to keep trying and do it in lots of different ways. For some kids who aren't used to talking very much about these kinds of things, it's going to feel intimidating to sit down at the couch or the table and have this formal conversation. A great strategy is to make it part of the routine, something that's familiar. Maybe it's on the drive home from school or during a game. Using play is a great strategy because it's the language that kids know. Weave it into something that you're doing that makes it really less threatening. You're creating the space, but then you let them decide how much do they want to talk and how do they want to talk.

Lynn Smith: I love that because playing is their safe place. It's their work. Somebody told me that, and it resonated so much. You have your job. Their job is to play. That's how they grow. Something that has been difficult in parenting in this generation is that the things that are tragedies are so hard to get our own heads around as adults—from school shootings to everything else in between. Is it okay to white lie, so they don’t have an idea of how bad it is out there?

Jody Baumstein: It's a really important question that a lot of people are struggling with, “How do I help them through this? I don't even know how to get through it.” It's human instinct to want to lie because we want to protect them. “This is too scary. It's too big and confusing. I don't want them to feel this. I don't want them to experience it.” There's a sweet spot with everything. We want to be careful because if we lie, there's a good chance they will figure it out. We don't give kids enough credit. They are paying attention. They're perceptive, and what we don't want to do is create uncertainty in their mind that they can trust us because we want them to come toward us when things are big and scary and not away from us.

If they think that we're not telling them the truth, they'll go elsewhere to get the information. We know the danger in that is that there's a lot of misinformation out there. Then they're left trying to figure it out. “How do I believe this? Who do I believe?” This is confusing. “What do I do? Again, if we want them to come toward us, then we have to be real with them. We don't need to tell them more than they need to know, but we do need to be upfront. If they're asking us a really direct question, lying is—more times than not—going to backfire. I do not recommend it.

Lynn Smith: As parents, I think we all want to tell them what they need to know and then provide the comfort for them. “You're safe here. We're your safety.” What are some of the ways that we can provide that comfort for our children?

Jody Baumstein: One of the most important things is to validate their experience. This is a really critical step in any big conversation you're having with kids. First, we have to help them name it. They need to know what it is that they're feeling, and I want to acknowledge that we really struggle with this because we all have this fear that talking about things is going to make it worse.

“I don't want to talk about it, it's just going to make it worse. I don't want to bring it up with them. I might cause them anxiety.” I understand that, but it's false. The reality is when we name something, it actually makes it more manageable. The first step in providing them comfort is to help them feel like they can handle this. Helping them to name that emotion is going to be critical. Then, you want to validate their experience. Validation does not mean you agree or that you have that exact feeling yourself. You're just letting them know, “I see you. I understand. It makes sense to me.” This is important because we can tolerate a lot of emotions as humans, adults and kids. What often causes so much of the pain is the shame … the judgment we experience in response to the feeling. “I shouldn't feel this way. What's wrong with me for feeling this way? Why can't I stop it?” That causes so much of the pain. If we can help take that part away, it actually becomes a lot more manageable for them.

Lynn Smith: Part of what gives you anxiety is that you can't control everything. I'm sure there’s anxiety for children when they feel like things are out of control, too. What are some ways we can help them with that feeling of not having control?

Jody Baumstein: First thing is we don't want to minimize that fear or that worry. Our instinct often is, “How do I make them feel better?” Tell them not to worry about it. “It's going to be fine. I'm worried about that, not you.” Those are well-intended statements, but it doesn't address the issue. We need to teach them concrete skills because this is one thing that's going to happen in their life that feels really out of their control, but they're going to experience a million other things as they get older. We want to use it as an opportunity to really build that muscle and build their resilience.

Let me first acknowledge that when the brain is anxious, it's racing, thinking about all the future what ifs and unknowns, worst case scenarios. A helpful strategy to work through that is called grounding. This is not grounding in the form of discipline. This is all about regulation. Having them plant their feet on the floor, take a deep breath, and then literally using their senses to bring them into the present moment. If the brain is racing into the future, worried about all this stuff they can't control, a great way to combat that is come back to the here and now. It's a really cool strategy because they can use it wherever they are, whenever they need to, nobody even has to know they're doing it. Plant their feet on the floor and have them look around and notice what they can see, hear, smell and touch.

When they're doing that, their brain is shifting their focus back to the present moment so they feel a little bit more grounded and in control. Outside of that, you want to give them opportunities to think about what concrete things they do have control over. What are the safety plans at school? Is there a family safety plan? Those tangible things can really help them to feel like there is something within their power.

Lynn Smith: I feel like I just avoid it. We don't have the news on when the children are around. I try and avoid the conversation. I'll be completely honest because maybe there are some other parents that do this as well. How bad is that on a scale of one to 10?

Jody Baumstein: First of all, let me say to you, Lynn, it's not wrong. We’ve got to get rid of the judgment. We're doing the best we can, and it’s hard being aware of that desire, which we all feel to avoid. With anxiety, it can be a really helpful tactic to use short-term distraction when we just need a minute, we need a break from something. “I'm going to distract myself by talking to a friend or playing a game.” That's a helpful strategy. The difference is with long-term avoidance, it actually fuels the anxiety and makes it bigger. If we're avoiding something, the brain is perceiving it to be such a threat and the longer we avoid it, the bigger it gets.

Then, we start to think, “I'm not capable of handling that.” What do we do with that instead? It's this gradual exposure to that thing we are scared of—if it's having a conversation, we're not going to jump right in to the deep end with a huge conversation. We're going to build it in a small everyday moment. We can't expect ourselves or kids to have deep, heavy conversations if we're not talking about the day to day. That's a gradual way to expose ourselves and them to conversation. It can be just the dinner table. Some people make it a part of the routine. It becomes so familiar. The kids don't even think twice. It's a beautiful way to do it, too. Some kids will even look forward to this ritual of every day at dinner, we do rose bud thorn, or we do high and low. It becomes so familiar and routine that when the bigger conversations need to happen, you've already set the foundation for it.

 

Lynn Smith: You gave us such good advice on how to start the conversation, but this isn't just, “We're going to have one talk and then never speak of it again.” How do we continue the conversation with our kids when there are tough topics?

Jody Baumstein: Like we were just saying, it's really about embedding it into the family dynamic. “We talk in our family.” That has to be so familiar that there's no question that when something comes up, we are capable of having these conversations. When a lot of big things are happening in the news or in the world in general, we want to be mindful of our reaction and keep our cool. If we have these really extreme reactions, when kids come to us about something, we've now shut the door. Now they don't feel safe to come. They're like, “No way, not doing that again. Gosh, my parent got so worked up about that.”

 

Try to keep cool as much as you can and create space for them to guide the conversation. Again, if we want them to be able to keep the conversation going, they need to see us as a safe space. You might want to just make it a habit that instead of just asking something like, “Hey, how was your day,” which we've asked a million times and we don't really get much back, ask them a specific question. “What was the best part of your day? What was something funny that happened?” Show interest in their life. Show interest in what they have to say so they want to come and talk to you.

 

Lynn Smith: What about limits on how much media or news your kids should consume?

Jody Baumstein: Limits are really important, not just for kids, but for us, too. We want to remember that until almost the age of 25, there is a part of kids’ brains that isn't fully formed. This part of the brain is helpful when it comes to things like impulse control. We can't just expect kids to set their own limits and figure it out on their own. They literally need us to help them.

When it comes to the news and media, there's a sweet spot with it all. We can be informed and not be consumed. This is critical. We want to start to teach kids by modeling it ourselves, how to tune in to our own feelings and adjust as needed. Many of us feel that we are just going through the motions and coasting through life at full speed and have no idea how we even feel. This requires intentionality and thoughtfulness around slowing down and noticing.

A lot of people, myself included, we sometimes have these alerts popping up with the news—on our phones, on our iPads, whatever device it is. These constant alerts are keeping a lot of people in this heightened and revved up state. Although we think, “I need to stay informed, I have to be on top of it.” For most of us, that's not serving us at all. In fact, it's counter to what we really need. For some people, it means that maybe I look at the news in the morning or at lunch, maybe once in the evening, and then that's it. “I'm not going to get the constant notifications.”

You have to find what works for you, but the main thing here, as far as limits go, is for the entire household. If we can role model at least shutting all screens down at least an hour before bed. Let's be honest, most of us are not sleeping well. We might be sleeping, but it might not be quality sleep. Make it a family habit that electronics, screens, everything is turned off at least a full 60 minutes before bed. That stimulation is keeping us up and what we are consuming can be really dysregulating right before bed.

Lynn Smith: It's a relationship, and the key to a successful relationship is communication. Even in parenting, you have to use that skill set of good communicating with your child to get anywhere. I think when these tragedies strike, they can be so intense. Many times people need to seek out professional help. When do you know it's the right time to say, “This is too overwhelming for me. I need help.”?

Jody Baumstein: When it comes to mental health, we're letting things go on for far too long. Most of us do not hesitate to go see a doctor. If there is a physical injury, illness, question even, we go. Most of us don't wait, we don't hesitate, but there's still a lot of stigma when it comes to mental health and a lot of confusion around what to do. The short answer to your question is, “Do not wait.” If you have gut instinct that something isn't right with your child, you're probably right. You are not expected to figure it out on your own.

You can go and get a consult with a licensed mental health professional, and you're not signing up for anything. You could go once and decide, “Maybe we don't need anything right now, but now I know where to go if we do.” There's this real need to stop being so reactive when it comes to mental health and really be proactive.

Kids are not going to have the language, most of the time, to be able to tell us they're struggling. And I don't mean just little kids. We want to pay attention to their behavior. That's how they're going to communicate instead of reacting the way we do when we're tired and we're overworked and we're stressed—Where we're responding with frustration. We want to think about responding with curiosity to figure out what are they trying to communicate. Big indicators here are that we all have ups and downs. Kids are going to have moments, but is it becoming excessive? Is it more days than not? Is it impacting their functioning in some way? Like you said earlier, we have jobs. Their job is to be a kid, play, go to school. If it's impacting their functioning, you might notice all of a sudden they're withdrawing from activities. They don't want to engage in those things they used to love to do, or their anxiety is so intense they can't go to school, or they're not engaging with their peers. These are really big indicators that something is going on. And again, you don't have to figure it out on your own. There are licensed mental health professionals who can help you tease it out, give you some concrete strategies, and if it has bubbled up to the point of crisis, can also intervene at that point.

Lynn Smith: Are there any other behaviors other than withdrawing from activities and maybe grades falling? What are some of the behaviors to really pay attention to and say, “I need to have them seek professional help.”

Jody Baumstein: It's going to look different for every kid, big changes in their mood or maybe your child is normally pretty upbeat and cheerful. Again, everybody has their ups and downs. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about now this is more days than not. It's excessive. They're tearful. Maybe they're not saying anything, but you just noticed their eyes are super glossy. Maybe they're not making eye contact. They're super fidgety. You can just tell. Sometimes it comes out as edginess. They're lashing out a lot at you, their younger sibling, withdrawing. All of a sudden, they're in their room a lot. They're not spending time with their friends.

Honestly, big changes in their eating or sleeping is often an indicator, too. Maybe they're sleeping a ton, or they're reporting that they can't sleep and they're up all night. Same thing with eating, no appetite or they're eating excessively. These are really good indicators that something's going on. And of course, we have to note that any mention of suicide always has to be taken seriously. We have to say that because there are still a lot of myths surrounding suicide when it comes to kids in particular—that they're just looking for attention. They won't actually do it. It's not true. Unfortunately, we see that with the data that it's not going in the right direction. That means that we have to take it seriously, every single time. No kid wants to say these things. If they're saying that they want to die, wish they didn't wake up, or they're not saying those things, but they're engaging in really reckless behavior, not acting like someone who wants to live. Take it seriously. Do not wait. That requires an immediate consultation and assessment.

Lynn Smith: It is such an important message because right now we're seeing time and time again that you're exactly right. It cannot be ignored. Jody, thank you so much for joining us. Such incredible information.

To learn more about the strategies and tips discussed today, visit choa.org/podcasts where we're going to link to a ton of great emotional wellness resources from Jody and her colleagues at Strong4Life, as well as their Raising Resilience Initiative. And in case you haven't already listened, we're going to be sure to link the two other episodes Jody joined us with in season one. Those were focused on anxiety and the other on suicide and depression. They were deeply moving and helpful conversations we think every parent should hear.

I'm Lynn Smith and this has been Hope and Will, a parenting podcast from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.