ORLANDO, Fla. — Our nation is dealing with a new trauma from yet another mass shooting, at a Texas school that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Talking about a tragedy like this with your children may feel very daunting.
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Channel 9 spoke with a psychiatrist about how you can broach the horrifying topic of a school shooting with your children.
Dr. David Medina said you don’t have to be directly impacted by trauma to experience it; you can still feel it from what you see and hear.
Medina said that most of us are in shock right now, even if mass shootings feel like a norm and he said that shock can evolve into a depression.
Read: Texas elementary school shooting: A timeline of events in the mass shooting
Medina offered some tips to look out for and to help talk to your kids about this shooting:
· How do they use social media?
· What is the material or the content that they are seeing?
· Make your child feel secure at home.
· If there are guns in the house, make sure your child knows they’re safe with them locked up and out of reach.
· Look out for new obsessions with death and bringing up loved ones who have passed.
Read: Texas elementary school shooting: What we know about the victims
Medina added that a lot of us, including children, are internalizing what has happened.
If you notice new fears they didn’t have before, like sleeping alone or being in the dark, he said that is a sign you may need to do more.
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