NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — How do you manage to feel anywhere close to normal while driving your children to school after the shooting at the Covenant School Monday? Two people understand this concern well.
Lauren Ruth Martin is a licensed therapist. Jacque Huffaker is a licensed professional counselor. Both of them are mothers to young children.
"I was emotional as I got to school and picked him up yesterday. I had to wear sunglasses cause I was a wreck," said Martin.
"But we don't want to alarm our children or have this atmosphere of being very anxious," Huffaker added. "Children pick up on that."
"It is scary," Martin continued. "We have to let ourselves be scared. We can't minimize what we're going through as parents."
"Maybe that's what you need to do today," said Huffaker. "Take the day. Feel the things. It's OK for this to be really heavy."
"The less we minimize, the more we actually let ourselves feel. The more we can do with it, the better we're going to process it," said Martin.
A hard question is; how do you speak to your children about what happened at The Covenant School? Huffaker said this is an area where you have to take into account your child's age and emotional maturity.
"I told my 6-year-old yesterday, 'something really bad and scary happened yesterday, and I want to tell you about it because you might hear about it at school, and I want you to hear it from me first,'" she said. "My little girl asked, 'did anybody get hurt?' 'Yes, yes they did.' I was very clear in my language, and she asked the questions. I did not provide that. You would not want to provide anything extra besides what she asked."
Martin said efforts are underway among those who work in mental health to be able to get out and help people when tragedies happen.
"Nashville has shown that, whether it's the flood, tornado, we are great in a crisis," she said. "One thing we have to do is sustained efforts. We are going to open up our doors. We are going to open up our spaces to offer more education, more accessibility, to make sure down the road, they're not forgotten."
