All this points to the importance of modeling appropriate behaviors—the things you can, at least in theory, control. “Parents need to manage their anxiety and emotions,” says Corinn Cross, MD, a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “This sets the tone for their children both in how they manage their own emotions and how much anxiety they feel.”
But you don’t need to hide all your feelings around your child
“Honestly, my kids have seen me cry a bunch,” a friend texted me this morning, when I asked her how she was “handling” it—and that felt just fine to her, an acknowledgment that adults have big feelings, too. As Harry Styles has reminded us, crying is a gender-neutral opportunity for cortisol release. That being said, it’s best to modulate those feelings to a child-appropriate degree. “When your child asks if you were upset, you can acknowledge that you’re sort of worried,” says Karp. “But it’s usually best not to say you’re scared or frightened.”
It’s also a good idea to focus on the positive, when you can. “Parents should try to remember to teach their children that most people in this country actually want the same things,” says Cross. They (mostly) see the same issues but “differ in how to approach those issues and how to fix those problems. There often isn’t a perfect solution to problems—every solution comes at a cost.” There are opportunities to teach lessons of compromise and middle ground, even if those aren’t the instincts governing your reactions in the moment. “Teach your child that it’s easy to be respectful to someone who sees the world the way you do,” says Cross, “but we are tasked with showing respect to those who seem to differ from us.”
Most importantly, preserve a sense of safety
A friend raising her kids in Washington, D.C., got a distressing email from her kid’s preschool, describing how the school was preparing for the possibility of violent unrest. How was she supposed to talk to her kids about that? Any parent who has felt their stomach plummet when their child chirping reports, “Today we had a lockdown drill at school,” is familiar with some version of this scenario—do our children really have to go through all that?