With a comic book hero, a movie theater, and a helpless crowd of young people enmeshed in this week’s “Dark Knight” tragedy in Aurora, Colo., it’s no wonder that parents across the country have begun grappling with how to help young ones deal with the incident and its aftermath.
Two longtime Aurora psychologists with expertise in treating children spoke to the Daily News Saturday with a few tips for parents.
Dr. Jeffrey Dolgan, a senior psychologist at The Children’s Hospital of Denver – where six victims were taken in the wake of the shooting – said parents should really take three major steps when broaching the subject of this or any traumatic event with their children.
“First, parents have to compose themselves,” Dolgan said, stressing that parents should think carefully about what they want to say to their children before they begin what will likely be a difficult conversation.
Dolgan mentioned that this step is especially important in dealing with the Aurora incident, given how little information has been made available on the gunman and his motives at this time.
Second, Dolgan recommended that parents actually let their children lead the way.
“Kids are all over the place with where they are developmentally,” he said. In order to deal with these differences, creating an atmosphere in which your children feel comfortable approaching you with questions would be optimal.
Dr. Richard Marafiote, another psychologist who has worked in Aurora for many years, stressed how important it is for parents to “tune in” to their children in moments like these.
“By and large I think about the importance of parents allowing their children to speak about how they feel rather than having those parents put on their children what they believe their child may think or feel,” he said.
Dolgan noted that while space is often a good thing, parents should keep a close eye on their kids’ behavior, especially their play.
“Kids are often short on language, but long on play,” he said, mentioning that it would be more than likely for children to incorporate the “Dark Knight” incident into their play or drawings.
“You have to redirect that kind of thing because the kids are just triggering themselves again,” he said.
Finally, Dolgan suggested parents should try to “normalize” the situation as much as possible, while limiting media exposure.
“What we’ve found with many studies is the more kids and parents see the same kind of visuals, the more traumatizing it is,” Dolgan said.
As for normalization, both Dolgan and Marafiote said it is not out of the ordinary for children, even far from a tragedy’s epicenter, to display anxious behavior following a traumatic event.
Trauma occurs in “waves,” Dolgan said. It moves outward from the site of the incident and eventually reaches people far and wide. So parents dealing with a child feeling anxiety in New York shouldn’t self-diagnose anything too early, he said: Bad dreams, startled responses, and not wanting to watch TV are not necessarily signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Marafiote said parents should seek professional help when a child’s “baseline” behavior seems to differ for a long period of time or if stress-related behavior seems to be spreading to otherwise unassociated areas of a child’s life.
Both psychologists recommended families check out several helpful websites, including the National Institutes of Mental Health the and material on trauma available in the “Facts for Families” section of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
