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.
Photo by Lois Mulder.
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.
18 Responses
Excellent. Thank you, Kathryn.
My heart hurts for this time in our history when our children and grandchildren are under so much hardship of which they are exposed to. Thanks for the way you have written about this.
Great article, great insight! The children are witnessing things even adults shouldn’t have to witness! I have talked to my grandkids about what is going on and have tried to reassure them. Finding good people and finding safe people is so important. Thanks for speaking up!
Kathryn,
Thank you. This was good, and we do need to talk with our kids as much as we talk about them. I sense that’s exactly what you are doing. A few things though:
“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.”
It never was, frankly, and never will be. We need to teach our children that fact and give them tools to navigate it, which you are offering in this article. Much appreciated.
Maybe one of those tools could be the teaching of Paul in Romans 5:1-5: Afflictions produce endurance, then character, then hope. In all this mess, we have hope, and there’s nothing to be ashamed about with that.
Final word, a little wisdom from Yoda in regards to all that fear:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering”.
I have this real sense that fear of almost everything and all the “others” is leading us down this messy, deadly path. Let’s do everything we can to acknowledge what is true and tamp down the fear. We have hope! (Even as I struggle to hold on to it).
Rodney:
Thank you for this response and reminder! We are huge Star Wars fans here, so Yoda makes sense!
I think that as a mom, one of the things I struggle with is a healthy awareness of surroundings (not fear) and a righteous anger (not rage). Scary things are happening. And while we do have hope, sometimes seeing that hope is really hard work. That makes me sad for them and for us all.
Amen! You are so spot on! Thanks!
Sandy
Thank you, Kathryn. I can sense your deep love for your kids and the kids of the world. It’s a tough time. Your words made me think about my middle school years and what adults said or didn’t say to me. I don’t remember anyone talking to me about the Vietnam War, the My Lai massacres, riots in the cities, the National Guard killing four college protesters in Ohio, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Soviets invading Czechoslovakia, Charles Manson and followers killing innocent people, recreational drugs becoming a thing, the Weather Underground setting off bombs in the US, the Six-Day War, the FBI spying on dissenters, and more. All this, even though I lived in the relatively sheltered US where American kids don’t face the trauma that kids in many other nations do. I knew these things because our family faithfully watched Walter Cronkite tell us “That’s the way it is.” But if you look in my diary, it’s full of things like what I had for lunch, who’s being nice to me, funny remarks by teachers, tests, football scores, etc. But then right in the middle will be a line like, “Read All’s Quiet on the Western Front.” decided to become a pacifist,” which I am to this day. Like I said, I don’t remember what anyone said about these matters. I do, however, remember those who told me about Jesus, in whom I could find firm footing in a crumbling world. Among the things we say to our kids about our messed up world, the best place to start is with Jesus. I know that may sound like a cliche, but even cliches have enough truth in them to deserve our attention.
Thank you for this, David. I, like you, didn’t hear about a lot of what was happening in the world when I was growing up. Sometimes I’m thankful for that, and sometimes I wish I had known so I could have developed some better skills to cope with hard things.
We talk a lot about Jesus and about being Jesus’ hands and feet in the world. Thanks for that reminder.
Thanks for sharing your heart and your honest thoughts, Kathryn. As an educator, I always hoped we could leave our world a little bit better for the next generation and feel sorrow as you do that our kids and grandkids have to go through all of this. Ignoring it won’t help them – thanks for your wise suggestions. We all need each other’s encouragement as we go through these times.
Thank you, Dan! And thank you for all you did during your years as an educator. You touched (and changed) so many lives!
Kathryn, I applaud your wisdom in needing to talk to your kids about what’s going on and I hear your frustration in the needing to. It’s one of the tough parts of parenting. I wonder if we don’t know what safety even means until ours is threatened. Or peace, or or or. I agree with RZ reminding us in Romans 5 about what suffering produces…hope that doesn’t disappoint. May it be so.
Amen!
And we thought bringing kids through Covid was hard!
And that COVID would be the last of all of the chaos!
Pray for the students and teachers at Columbia Heights School district in Minnesota. Liam has returned but Elizabeth is still missing and the school had a bomb threat this week. These kids are one of the target centers of the ICE conflict. This is lot to endure for these precious ones.
Thank you for speaking truth. Much of what I see, hear, and feel will impact my life for a far shorter time than it will the trajectory of my kids and grands. Because talk of politics has become verboten in our family, we feel hamstrung to ask especially our grands how they are processing what is going on, not wanting to violate what they may have discussed at home. Yet, the inhumanity of it all makes me want to let them know it’s safe to ask questions of me and that I will not rant, nor rave, but will try to give a fair assessment which comes from a life lived in relative safety and peace, with a few anxious times, but nothing like what is happening now. I want to make sure they hear all perspectives.
Our daughters were trying to explain to their almost 6-year-old son what was happening in Minneapolis. He said, “But we are safe because we are white.”
He goes to likely the most diverse school system in West Michigan, he had all sorts of friends from different backgrounds, but, innocent little boy that he is, he already understands how broken our world is. Sigh…
Yes, yes, and yes! Thank you!