Whether your family has endured a natural disaster, like Hurricane Helene this fall, or a tragedy, like a school shooting or other devastating community events, you need tools to support your family to cope with it. Understanding what tragedies and disasters do to our children’s brains and bodies gives us an excellent starting point for helping them cope well. You all deserve safe, healthy ways to process what you’ve experienced. However, your kids may need your support to navigate the new path these events created for your family.
What are the Common Impacts of Tragedies & Disasters?
We know that significant events like Hurricane Helene or community violence can shake even the
with mistrust, feeling unsafe, or questioning the general goodness in the world where they live. Parents and caregivers can look for several impacts when assessing how their kids are faring through tragedies and disasters.
Brain-based Impacts
The regularly developing connections in a child’s brain help them grow and increase their understanding of the world. Tragedies and disasters can slow or thwart that growth. Brain-based trauma may show up in a child after a tragedy in some of the following ways:
- Heightened states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn
- Challenges with decision-making
- Increased difficulty with impulse control
- Difficulty managing emotions
- Decreased ability to learn or remember new information
- Decreased IQ or learning potential
- Regression in behavior or skill development
Worries and Fears
The nature of children is to be self-focused. This egocentrism is developmentally necessary. A younger child’s world is small, so their sphere of worry starts small. However, as they grow, our kids experience a widening sphere of worry, which can be challenging to manage. The older they are, the more likely they realize this tragedy impacts others outside their home, family, or community. Processing these connections is overwhelming and confusing.
These worries and fears may make it challenging for a child to grow and learn or to re-engage as life returns to normal.
Parenting a Child Exposed to Trauma
Guilt and Shame
It may make no sense to us as adults with fully developed brains. But when our kids experience a tragedy or disaster, they often struggle with guilt and shame. We know they are not responsible for securing essential documents or locking the house at night. However, when their mind is processing how this event occurred and what comes next, they also are processing their role.
The same egocentrism that causes them to focus on how the event impacts their world also causes them to perceive that they could have prevented it. Guilt and shame may not be realistic or even logical. Still, they exist for many of our kids after tragedy, nonetheless.
Behavior Changes
Many kids in our community are already experiencing behavior challenges rooted in the chaos, extreme stress, or trauma that brought them to our homes. Those behaviors may increase dramatically when a tragic event occurs for your family or community. You already know what struggles your child faces, but look out for increases in:
- Clinginess
- Tantrums/Meltdowns
- Sleep challenges
- Mood swings/irritability
- Withdrawal or isolation
You might also see changes in appetite (eating too much or too little) and the rehashing of difficult questions that feel beyond their understanding.
Physiological Changes
When a child experiences a tragedy or disaster, you may see physiological changes that warrant your attention, such as hypersensitivity to lights or sounds. They might also complain of headaches, stomachaches, or other vague body pains (without medical explanation, like the flu or a cold).
Hyperfocus on the Event
Kids who have experienced events like hurricanes, floods, or violence tend to rehearse the event repeatedly. They ask the same round of twenty questions even though you give them the same answers every time as their brains process what they experienced.
They may also develop a hyperfocus on media coverage of the event. Our kids commonly respond strongly to reminders of the event or are triggered by others recounting their experiences.
How to Support a Child After a Tragedy or Disaster
These impacts often subside as the child’s world levels out again. Your goal should be to answer their pressing internal questions of “Am I safe?” “Will my needs get met?” and “Am I going to be okay?” The good news is that most of our kids are already learning resilience, especially if you’ve been implementing trauma-informed parenting in your home.
These tips can help you help your kids build on that resilience and cope with a tragedy while maintaining a safe and connected relationship in your family.
Understand the Role of Protective Factors
Several factors will buffer your child before tragedies or disasters. These same factors will also help you get back on your feet after an event. These include:
- positive relationships with family members
- positive relationships with teachers and peers
- participation in school and extra-curricular activities
- age-appropriate social skills
- positive self-esteem
- willingness to ask for help or express themselves
- lack of substance use
- lack of access to firearms/weapons
Practical Tips to Implement
You can follow the following tips daily, even if your new normal differs from what your family was accustomed to before the tragedy. As much as you can manage, try to:
- Return to your familiar routines (bedtime, family dinner, etc.) to reinforce the idea that this is who we are and what we do.
- Help your kids help others. Giving and serving is healing for everyone!
- Maintain and make healthy connections in your circles. Show your kids the value of relationships and that connections don’t always change when tragedy strikes.
- Offer specific praise for the behaviors you want to increase. When you are direct and specific, children under stress will grasp what they need to do.
- Listen actively and intentionally. Your kids can tell when you are distracted. They need your focused attention in this season of high anxiety and fear.
- Engage (and keep engaging) in conversation with your kids. They need to know you can handle their fears about the hard stuff. Share what you know, correct misinformation, and offer tangible information about what’s coming up.
- Validate their emotions as real and complex. Help them plan healthy responses and coping tools.
- Offer clear, concise instructions. If you need or want them to do something, be specific and give a time limit. Be polite and respectful, but make the information direct. Frame it positively, such as “Please use your big girl voice.”
- Consistently hold the line with follow-through or follow-up. You may need to give them extra time to process what you’ve said but still require your child to do what you asked.
- Engage in family activities that build connections and positive feelings among you: quiet time, movie nights, craft time, movement breaks, etc.
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Don’t Forget Self-Care
Supporting your child after a tragedy or disaster can be overwhelming and stressful, besides the stress you are already experiencing. In helping your kids cope, give yourself grace and space to process. You can practice this self-care process to help you right your ship.
1. Breathe!
Take a deep, slow breath in. Notice where you are holding stress in your body.
Take a second deep breath. What thoughts are bouncing around in your mind?
Breathe in slowly for a third time. Identify the emotions swirling for you right now.
2. Reset.
Identify the spaces within you that need steadying or calming. Engage in meditation, prayer, physical activity, or journaling to focus you.
3. Let it go!
(Sorry for the earworm!) When you find yourself intensely rehashing thoughts, learn how to interrupt the cycle. Label the issue or negative cycle and try physically opening your hands to symbolize a release. Then, move on to another activity that hones your focus away from those challenging thoughts.
4. Nourish.
Find things to do that refresh you and bring you joy. Schedule it and hold yourself accountable for engaging in self-care regularly.
5. Consider a self-care buddy.
Sharing the healing experiences of self-care with a trusted friend can boost how effectively it heals you and how well you stick to it. Self-care is vital in the days, weeks, and months after a disaster or tragedy.
You can protect yourself from burnout and fuel yourself enough to give your kids what they need. Our kids learn how to cope and heal from watching us, and modeling self-care is an excellent investment in their long-term success!
This post was originally published by Creating A Family on January 2, 2025. View the original post here.
