Explaining Tragedy to Children: How to Explain Tragic Events to Kids

How do we talk to children about tragic events where lives were taken?

My six-year-old happened to be at my parent’s house when the terrible news came in – he caught on that a bomb had exploded in Boston. He told me about it at home and said he hopes they “catch the bad guys”.

On our way to school today, he seemed quite worried about the events – he again mentioned the bombing and asked if his cousins (who live in Connecticut) live anywhere near Boston, and asked if there would be bombs there too. I reassured him that our family is safe and that the police are investigating and will find out who did this.

How do I explain to my child that there are bad people in our world but they won’t harm our family? How can I make him feel better and worry too much about our safety? I told him that most people are good in this world and that the bad guys will be caught.

What more can I say without going into too much detail? Explaining tragedy to children can be difficult but there are ways parents can speak to their kids about it. I asked Dr. Deborah Deborah Gilboa of AskDoctorG.com to offer some advice:

1. Process your own emotions first. Our kids will have reactions, and it’s our job to help them with that. If we are still figuring out or expressing our own feelings strongly, that will be harder, and scarier for them.  We don’t have to pretend we’re not affected, but should get that first storm of reaction out of the way if we can, before talking to our kids.

2. Decide what your child is old enough and ready to understand. There are some great websites for help with this, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

3. Keep your conversation short – let your children take it in and check back in later to see if they have questions or want to say anything.

4. Focus on the helpers. It’s a quote from Mr. Rogers a long time ago, but don’t forget to look for all the people who ran to help, all the marathoners who kept running after the race – right to the hospital to donate blood!

5. Be a helper. Look for something you and your kids can do to support the people who are suffering.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty,
the ocean does not become dirty. ~M.Gandhi

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive. ~ Dalai Lama

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his
individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.