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How to Help Children After the School Shooting.
Here are some things you can do to help children:
• Try and come to terms with your own feelings before talking to children so that they see you calm. Children catch their moods from you.
• Turn off the television. Seeing the graphic images is terrifying.
• Give children opportunities to talk about their feelings. Let them vent.
• Give them opportunities to ask questions.
• Remind them that children in 100,000 public schools went to school last Friday and were safe, and that what happened was a very rare occurrence.
• Teach them relaxation exercises, like deep breathing.
• Involve them in something neat and fun to do to take their minds off this.
• Children feel safe with traditions. Have some daily rituals that stay the same no matter what is happening in the world.
• If your school setting allows praying, pray together for the safety of all children. For those of us who are prayers, this can be great comfort for children and for adults.
• Make sure that there is an emergency plan in place to keep children safe.
• Remind children that the world is a good place, even if a few people do bad things.
• Promote lessons of kindness, diversity, and respect for all people so children learn early on to value human life.
• Talk about the wonderful community helpers available to help. There are emergency workers, doctors, nurses, firemen, and police officers all working together to help keep children safe.
• Be aware that children will have different reactions to what happened depending on their own personal lives. Children who have gone through some type of trauma, or children who are extra sensitive, or children with special needs, may need extra reassurance and extra patience during this time.
May this and every day, be a safe day for children.