Just 24 hours ago, two bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people, including an 8-year-old boy, and injuring some 170 more. There's a good chance you, like me, are having trouble thinking about much else today. There's also a good chance you'll need to address this horrifying event—which has been documented through vivid and often gruesome images—with your students.
Gene Beresin, a child psychiatrist and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Mental Health and Media, wrote a helpful piece on how to discuss what happened in Boston with kids on the WBUR blog CommonHealth. For school-age kids, he says, be prepared for them to ask the same questions again and again. "Be patient," he writes. "Remember that by asking the questions, they're telling you that they trust you." It's also important to "let younger children know that even though they've seen TV images of explosions dozens of times over many days, they each happened only once and on one day," he explains. "The Marathon was only run once and it is over."
In addition, he writes: "Remind your children that there are many, many more good people in the world than there are bad people, and that the good people will try to take care of them and protect them."
