�������ýҕ�l

When terrible news breaks, such as Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, our first instincts might be to shield children from the dangers of the world. But experts say that’s the wrong thing to do. We should expect school-aged children to talk about events in the news — like a mass shooting or a natural disaster — with their peers when they’re out of the house. (Cataudella, 5/24)

The shooting in Texas is forcing parents and schools to once again confront how to talk to kids about violence. Experts have told The Times these are complex and sensitive conversations, but also vital — especially for the children of today, who’ve endured a pandemic. “And now, on top of all those already existing pandemic-related chronic stressors, many children and families may be overwhelmed with the added fear of sending their children to school,” said Katherine Williams, a child and adolescent psychologist and professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego. (Newberry, 5/24)

After the Las Vegas concert shooting in 2017, Jane Ripperger-Suhler, a child psychiatrist at Seton’s Texas Child Study Center, had this advice for parents about how much we should say about a mass shooting, and it’s good advice for what has happened today: We need to be careful about who is watching with TV with us and how we explain it. ... If [children] don’t seem to be able to move on after a few days, are afraid to go to school, are too scared to go to bed, are having physical symptoms of stress or behavior problems, get them help sooner rather than later, Ripperger-Suhler says. Be especially aware if a child has experience a trauma before. Watching this scene on TV will not cause post-traumatic stress disorder, she says, but it can be more traumatic and disturbing to some kids. (Villalpando, 5/24)

Parents in Massachusetts and around the country are facing a tough conversation with their children following Tuesday's deadly school shooting in Texas. The shooting may seem like an unspeakable horror, but mental health experts say it is crucial for parents to talk about it with their kids. "They really need to hear from parents that they are safe and there's lots of ways to tell that to kids," said Dr. Erica Lee, a psychologist at Boston Children's Hospital. Lee said as children are processing the tragedy, parents should use their words to establish a sense of safety. "Letting them know that you're doing everything that you can to protect them; that you would never send them to school if you thought they were going to be unsafe, the school has a good safety plan," Lee said.

In the wake of the deadly mass shooting, many parents are left grappling with how to explain the horrific act of gun violence -- at a setting where most kids spend a majority of their days -- to their children and teens. ... When it comes to children preschool age and below, Dr. Robin Gurwitch, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor at Duke University Medical Center, said that parents should limit their media exposure. "Preschoolers may not understand instant replays," she said. "So that loop of children running out of the school, if they don't know that that's a replay, they think that school has thousands and thousands of students." (Team, 5/24)

Late last year, after four students were killed and others injured in a shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan, Chalkbeat compiled a list of resources for coping with trauma and trying to prevent future tragedies. Among them was a list of common reactions and warning signs to look for in helping a child or student in the aftermath of a school shooting. (5/24)

Two local experts on security in schools shared their perspectives with Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 on the deadly mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. ... Before a school or any group of people is a target of violence, retired Secret Service member Jeff James says there are signs. “These things don't just happen. People don't snap,” James said. He said there will be a dive into the suspect’s past and use of social media, but law enforcement can't see everything before someone acts. (Gunderson, 5/24)

Following a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas that killed at least 19 children and two adults, a large blood bank in San Antonio, Texas, rushed 25 units of donated blood to the small town of Uvalde. Now, South Texas Blood and Tissue is asking the public for more donations. In a statement, the organization said it sent 15 units of low titer O whole blood, which is used in emergency situations because it can be transfused on-site or in an emergency vehicle, to Uvalde via helicopter. After receiving a request for more, they sent an additional 10 units of O negative blood to a hospital in Uvalde late Tuesday afternoon. (O'Kane, 5/24)

Shortly after the nation’s latest mass shooting, which killed at least 18 children at an elementary school in Texas, the California Senate passed a bill Tuesday to allow private citizens to file suit for at least $10,000 — a bounty-hunter provision modeled on a Texas abortion law — against makers or sellers of untraceable ghost guns or illegal assault weapons. “We do have some of the toughest gun laws in the country,” Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), told his colleagues amid news of the slaughter inside an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. But public enforcement of those laws has not been enough to protect Californians against the “new wave of weapons,” he said, and private lawsuits would create “an incentive to get these dangerous weapons off the street.” (Egelko, 5/24)

Once again, lawmakers, mental-health professionals, gun-control advocates, the National Rifle Association and people across the land are searching for answers, and debating gun-control laws — or lack thereof — in the United States. “People with mental-health issues are more likely to be victims than perpetrators,” said Chethan Sathya, a pediatric trauma surgeon and director of Northwell Health’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention, headquartered in New Hyde Park, N.Y. “We have to be very careful how we talk about the link between the two,” he said. “When it comes to folks with mental-health issues these public-health strategies are important because they often involve the victims themselves.” (Fottrell, 5/24)

The kids who lived through the start of the school shooting era have grown up. Most of them came of age in the late ’90s and the 2000s, when mass shooters started showing up in schools in Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; and Springfield, Oregon (though some survived them even earlier). Now adults in their 30s and 40s, many with children of their own, they are navigating a world in which what happened to them was not an anomaly but the beginning of a recurrent feature of American life. As children, they practiced tornado and fire drills at their schools. Because of what happened to them, their kids have active shooter drills, too. There’s no real guidebook for recovering from what they experienced. What distinguishes the thousands of survivors of the early wave of school mass shootings from those who came after is that they experienced those shootings in a world wholly unprepared to deal with the aftermath. Few got the mental health treatment now considered necessary for survivors of mass violence. As a result, many were left on their own, to process their trauma in the countless years — and school shootings — since. (Cogan, 1/24)