Take a little bit of extra time.
To hug your child a little bit tighter.
To look him in the eyes and
tell them that you love him.
And realize that there is a mother today.
Who don't have that opportunity?
A reminder to all parents across
the triad after yesterday's deadly
shooting at Mount Tabor High
School. There is still so much left
to process and it raises a lot of
questions for students and parents,
whether they are there in the Mount Tabor
community or whether they are anywhere.
Watching this video,
where do you even begin to navigate it all?
Joining us right now to help
is psychotherapist Dr Nanette
Funderburg and licensed clinical
social worker Adam Goldammer.
We want you to send in your
questions to our experts.
And this is how you send in those questions.
You text that question to
336-379-5775. Again, this is a text only,
so please don't call.
But we do want you to text in your questions.
All right. So first and foremost,
I know that there's a lot of us who are
struggling to come to grips with all of this.
I'm sure it's it's somewhat
similar and yet a little different.
If you are in that community versus if
you are just watching what's unfolding.
So net, how do you if you are someone who
is watching everything that's happened?
How do you kind of process all this and
get to a good place with all of this?
Well, you know, first of all,
you want to recognize that this situation,
being as trim as tragic
and traumatic as it is,
it is just give yourself permission
to to grieve what you're seeing and
grieve what you're what you're experiencing.
So allow yourself to feel the feelings
versus just just trying to push
past the day or push past the past.
This issue situation.
Also, if you need to take a break from.
From getting all of this information,
then take a break from getting
all of this information,
but because it can become overwhelming, I
think you're so right we kind
of get sucked into this right.
We just start going.
What's the next update?
Because we want to know what's
happening and yet that can be a
little bit detrimental as well.
Alright, so Adam,
I know a lot of times,
you know when people are talking with
their kids they want to fix everything,
right?
And I think the big mistake
there is sometimes they don't
listen because they want to.
Fix everything.
Absolutely, and I think that one
of the things that parents can
utilize is silence in the situation.
Just listen to their kids and understand
that they're they're processing
this along with the community,
but they actually experience
the stuff first hand,
and they've lost a student and
a loved one and dear friend,
and I think that one of the
main things is stop and enjoy
or join in the moment and just
utilize silence in the situation.
Don't always try to force advice on them,
just be genuine in this situation
and there's definitely something
with that whole reinforcement
of I hear you, right. Lynette
absolutely. And in a situation like this,
it can be really easy for parents or
caregivers to just talk, talk, talk,
because they're really just trying
to make sure their child is OK,
and that's understandable.
The best way to make sure that
your child is OK is is to like,
like Adam was saying.
Is that silence so that you can hear
and then you will be able to know
what is it that I need to respond to?
Or do they just need to dump
this information and the feeling
and the emotion out?
So today the OK thing reminded me of
what the Winston-Salem police chief said
today she said it's OK to not be OK,
but are there levels of not OK
that you're OK with as a parent?
I mean you do want to let your child
grieve and you do want your child to
be able to tell you about their fears.
But is there a point when them not
being OK is a time when you need to get
help or you need to do something else?
You want to start to pay attention to you,
know those behaviors you know
what their normal behaviors are,
and so start to pay attention to
what looks abnormal for them or what
looks abnormal for the situation
so abnormal to to the child for the
child you would know what that is,
just you know, just because it's your
child abnormal to the situation is you
know if this just seems like nothing,
and now I'm going to eat a baloney sandwich.
So those two extremes or what
I would pay attention to?
Also, behavior issues might pop up simply
because we're talking about people who
don't have fully developed brains yet,
so they don't know how to take
in all of this information.
And sometimes when they take it in,
what gets spit back out is just
something that might be inappropriate or
might not be right for the situation.
You might have to give them a little
bit of grace in situations like that.