8 Tips for Parents and Caregivers: Restoring a Child’s Sense of Safety After School Shootings
The most powerful tool adults have to manage stress and to help our young people manage stress is the human relationship.
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June 6, 2022
The most powerful tool adults have to manage stress and to help our young people manage stress is the human relationship.
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By Pamela Cantor, M.D., and Kate Felsen
It’s a beautiful thing to watch—a child embracing a parent knowing that if they just hold on tight, they will be safe. We know this about children. They believe they will be safe if their parents are safe.
Now imagine this—a child lets go of that hug and says goodbye to a parent in the morning believing that they will be safe at school, and instead is shot and killed there, and the parent never gets to embrace that beloved child again. This young life is over, replaced by never-ending grief.
There is no promise of safety that can be made in the United States today—not after Uvalde, Texas; Parkland, Fla.; Newtown, Conn. … the list of horror and heartbreak goes on. Today, no parent can guarantee this safety, and no child can feel safe, but we must try.
Since the Columbine High School rampage in 1999, there have been shootings at 331 schools—42 of them in 2021, and 24 more so far this year. During this period, more than 300,000 children have been exposed to gun violence in their schools, which is by itself deeply traumatizing. Millions more across the country have had their sense of safety shaken to the core.
The connection between safety and learning is fundamental. Without a sense of safety and belonging, a child’s ability to focus, concentrate, persist, and even remember what has already been learned gets interrupted. There is a biological reason for that.
When humans are under stress, when we feel unsafe, the hormone cortisol floods our bodies. In small doses, cortisol can be helpful. It produces that familiar feeling of fight, flight or freeze, and helps us prepare for an exam or a performance or get out of the way of a falling object. In large amounts, however, when stress is unrelenting and when it is unbuffered by the presence of a trusted adult, cortisol becomes toxic. It weakens our immune and health systems disrupting the development of the brain’s limbic system which is key to attention, learning and the regulation of our emotions.
Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. The hormone oxytocin is also part of the human stress response, but it is more powerful at the level of the cell than cortisol. Oxytocin produces feelings of trust, love and safety, but that’s not all. It protects against the damage done by overwhelming stress; it heals; and it produces resilience to future stress.
Remember that children derive their sense of safety from the adults in their lives, especially when they are in very stressful situations. Oxytocin helps us understand that there is a biological basis for that feeling. This means that the most powerful tool adults have to manage stress and to help our young people manage stress is the human relationship. Relationships that are strong and trustful release oxytocin, and oxytocin can restore a child’s sense of safety and well-being.
Here are 8 tips for adults to reassure children in the aftermath of school shootings:
Did you notice that all eight tips revolve around one important biological fact? The human relationship has the power to relieve stress, promote resilience, and restore a young person’s sense of safety, which is fundamental to learning. This fact is what all adults should be guided by in their actions with young people today.
Join this on-demand webinar with Turnaround for Kids: After the Shootings: How to Help Our Kids and Ourselves.
Pamela Cantor, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, founder of Turnaround for Children, author, and thought leader on human potential, the science of learning and development, and educational equity.
Kate Felsen is president of Up Up Communications, co-founder of Feed the Frontlines NYC, and a youth lacrosse coach. She earned 11 Emmy Awards during a distinguished career at ABC News.