We need to talk about the kids.
Not someday. Not later. Now.

We need to talk about what children are being asked to carry in their still-forming bodies and brains. We need to talk about how they are processing what they are seeing and hearing and absorbing in the United States—and around the world—right now. We need to talk about the trauma they are enduring quietly, daily, relentlessly. And we need to talk about what that trauma is doing to them long-term.

We need to talk about how parents like me have had to sit our children down and say words no child should have to hear: that a member of federal law enforcement murdered yet another American citizen in broad daylight. That there has been yet another school shooting. That they need to understand what an insurrection is. What a pedophile is. What it means to be a felon but not a convicted felon. Why Venezuela and Greenland are suddenly part of dinner-table conversation.

We need to teach them to “look for the helpers,” while also teaching them—God help us—to stay vigilant, because not everyone who looks like a helper actually is. We need to make sure they aren’t watching Charlie Kirk or Alex Pretti or George Floyd being murdered on their phones. Or on anyone else’s. We need to monitor their screens not just for time limits, but for trauma. For harm. For images that lodge themselves in the brain and never quite leave.

We need to talk about the kids.

Resilience: the ability to be happy, successful, etc., again after something difficult or bad has happened (Cambridge Dictionary)

I don’t need the dictionary to tell me that resilience is the ability to bounce back, to be happy or successful again after something bad happens. I see it every day. I live with it. I marvel at it. Our kids are resilient. Incredibly so.

But here is the truth we refuse to say out loud: the children–my children–should not be asked to be resilient over and over and over again.

They should not be required to bounce back from things that never should have happened in the first place.

Children should be going to school with a deep, embodied sense of safety—excited to see their friends, eager to learn, free to be children. They should not have to scan rooms. They should not have to assess threats. They should not have to keep one part of their brain on watch at all times to protect their physical survival.

They should not have to witness institutions they were taught to trust—schools, churches, the nation itself—be dismantled, hollowed out, and treated as disposable. Broken open and broken apart.

The Mayo Clinic tells us resilience means coping with tough events and continuing on, even when there is anger, grief, and pain. As a mother of teenage daughters, I work hard to teach them this. I want them to be strong. I want them to be capable. I want them to keep going when life is hard and frightening.

But I also know this: I ask them to cope with tough events far more often than is fair.

I ask them to process grief while I am still grieving. I ask them to regulate emotions I am barely managing myself. I try to give them space for anger and sadness while my own spills over and mixes with theirs, until none of us quite knows where one ends and the other begins. And some days—many days—there is simply no energy left to “dig deep.” No reserve left to call resilience forth one more time.

We need to talk about the kids.
Because we are failing them.

Tenacity: the determination to continue what you are doing (Cambridge Dictionary)

Tenacity is the determination to keep moving forward. And yes—raising children has always required courage. But raising them in this chaotic, rage-soaked era demands something sharper and more exhausting: constant vigilance. Relentless tenacity.

It requires an awareness that the cultural, political, social, and religious air our children breathe is fundamentally different from the air I breathed at their age. Our country has changed. And not for the better.

This isn’t just about politics. It’s about tone. It’s about atmosphere. It’s about the moral climate my daughters move through every day. It’s about watching cruelty become casual, lies become normalized, and empathy treated as a weakness rather than a virtue.

It’s about realizing that values I once assumed were shared—basic decency, respect for truth, care for the vulnerable—are suddenly optional. Debated. Mocked. Discarded.

I am trying to raise good humans while the loudest voices in the country model the opposite. I tell my daughters to be kind while they watch mockery rewarded. I tell them words matter while lies spread freely and without consequence. I tell them everyone deserves dignity while entire groups of people are kidnapped, murdered, disappeared, and reduced to threats or jokes. People they know—real people—have been detained, some have been deported, and many are living in constant fear.

There is no parenting book for this. No script. No tidy explanation that reassures a child the world is safe and fair when you no longer believe that yourself.

We need to talk about the kids. 

And we need to talk about them right now. 

Grit: courage and determination despite difficulty (Cambridge Dictionary)

Beneath the raising of children in this cultural, social, religious, and political moment is the invisible labor—the constant filtering, the calculation of what to share and what to shield, the careful conversations held late at night or over dinner. My husband and I try to carry our fear quietly so our daughters don’t inherit our panic. 

A simple Google search tells me that grit complements both resilience and tenacity by adding passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Determination despite difficulty. 

But the fear is still there.

Fear about what is becoming normal.
Fear about who will be murdered next.
Fear about which friends will be deported or detained.
Fear about whom to trust.
Fear about whose humanity will be questioned next.
Fear about the country, the schools, the churches we are handing to our children and asking them—again—to be resilient enough to survive.

We need to talk about the kids.

And maybe–probably–definitely–we need to apologize.