Easing Back-to-School Anxiety: Tips for a Successful Transition

Talking to your kids about school shootings and gun violence

With the increasing threats and incidents of gun violence affecting schools, it’s understandable that students and parents alike may be feeling heightened anxiety. As adults, it’s our responsibility to guide children through these challenging times and help them manage their fears and understand the situation in a healthy way despite our own anxieties and distress. Children often look to parents or supportive adults to identify the best way to navigate through distress, process dangers, and react to current events. While each situation is unique and each child is unique I have compiled a few strategies to keep in mind while discussing school shootings and gun violence with your children.

1. Assess Their Knowledge

Start by finding out what your child already knows about recent events. Tailor your explanation to their developmental level

• Young Children (Elementary Age): If they haven’t mentioned the event, avoid bringing it up unless necessary. Instead, reassure them about the safety protocols in place at their school, including drills for various emergencies (i.e. fire, natural disasters, active shooters, etc). It’s better to protect their innocence and focus on their safety as well as the importance of complying with school regulations/ safety protocols.                      
• Older Children (High School Age): They will be more informed and most likely exposed to details or actual footage via social media. It’s best to ask this age range open-ended questions to gauge their understanding of the event and understand the details to which they have been exposed. Examples of appropriate questions are:
  • “What have you heard about what happened?”
  • “How are you feeling about it?”
  • “What are your friends saying or sharing online?”
  • “What have you watched or seen in social media?”

2. Listen and Validate Their Feelings

Allow your child to express their emotions without interrupting or correcting them. Acknowledge that feeling scared, angry, and frustrated are normal feelings. Simply listening can help them process their feelings and reduce their anxieties. Don’t try to fix it, just listen. This is not a time to process your feelings but to offer support.

3. Reassure Them About Their Safety

Help your child understand the safety measures in place at their own school. Identify ways they may feel safe within their school, how teachers and administration are there to protect them and highlight the probability of safety versus violence.  Anxiety and the mass coverage in media provides disproportionate views of the probability or likelihood of the situation. While even one school shootings happen is WAY more than should ever happen we want to focus on the number of times that schools are safe and how many times children have already attended school safely. Again, the world is a dangerous place, but we also experience many situations day to day that are not dangerous.

4. Limit Exposure to Media

Children and teens are often exposed to extensive and raw media coverage of these events. Encourage them to take breaks from news and social media, and to focus on face-to-face interactions. Model this behavior by limiting your own media consumption in front of them. Continued focus and attention on media coverage leads to copy-cat and hysteria-driven threats.

5. Be Mindful of Adult Conversations

Kids are always listening; Children pick up on adult discussions and reactions, so be conscious of how you talk about these events. It’s okay to express your own feelings, but its also helpful to demonstrate how you are managing your emotion and anxieties constructively.

6. Get involved.

Channel your own anxiety into positive action. Engage in advocacy in school safety and support local legislations. Participate in school board meetings and familiarize yourself with your district’s safety committee. By law, each school district has a school safety and security committee within the school board, get to know yours, your school policies, and take issue with concerns you may have publicly.  

7. Maintain routine.

While it’s important to follow your own family’s needs and feelings especially if overwhelmed,  it can be highly effective to return to routines and structure as quickly as possible in order to provide security and emotional regulation. There’s coping in being mindful and in an established routine, a regular school schedule can help with predictability, comfort, and aid a family to return to baseline more effectively than ruminating on fears. If able to feel comfortable in the routine, many kids than can process their emotions appropriately.

It’s common for school threats around the country to increase after highly publicized mass shootings and while it’s a personal anxious-fueled call to keep your children home or send them to back to school there can be comfort in knowing the benefits of routine and predictability, taking back control rather than being a victim, and recognizing that danger is approximately equal in the days following versus the days prior to an attack.

8. Seek Mental Health Support

If you or your child is experiencing significant fears of attending school or increasing anxiety  consider seeking professional help from a mental health professional.  At Healthy Minds Psychology Group  we offer support and individual therapy, or you can find a local provider through PsychologyToday.com. For those directly affected by gun violence, those who have directly witnessed distressing footage, or those who have lost a loved one or school mate by gun violence it is strongly recommended that professional aid be sought.

Additional Resources

1. https://www.schoolcounselor.org/Publications-Research/Publications/Free-ASCA-Resources/After-a-School-Shooting
2. https://firearminjury.umich.edu/resources-communities/resources-for-communities-after-a-school-shooting/

By following these strategies, you can help your child navigate their feelings and maintain a sense of security despite the challenging circumstances facing our youth today.