After lots of hugs, kisses, and affection!
Remember to show your love, not your need for them to be doing great.
1. Assess the impact of the event on yourself – you need to be healthy to help your child
2. Assess the impact of event on your child.
3. Take care of immediate safety issues if urges to hurt themselves or others
4. Have some discussion to allow them to vent their feelings.
5. Validate their feelings as being OK for such a shocking event – each kid has their own way of feeling.
6. Predict some future struggle – Let them know they might be upset, afraid, crying, trouble sleeping and that is normal.
7. Systematic review of incident and the impact of each aspect on their beliefs to bring truth into their head and dis-spell lies. ex, I was mean to a friend and that is why they are dead. God is mean. All people wearing black are evil. School is physically dangerous everyday.
8. Closure – you are safe now, next steps
9. Returning to routine and baseline functioning.
10. Observing for changes in behavior, mood, quiet, impulsive or over-emotional behaviors.
11. Periodic discussions connecting with them to see what is still swimming around inside about the incident or ripple distortions/lies getting planted from the event.