Parenting Through Collective Trauma: How Do We Raise Hopeful Kids in a Broken World?
I saw a little girl do a cartwheel on the playground this afternoon and had to fight the urge to sob. On the other side of the chain link fence, I sat in the pick-up line, waiting for my own bundle of innocence to tumble out of the building next door. Laughter spilled over the hum of idling cars as the boys kicked around a ball next to two girls comparing the height of their toe touch.
Moments like this undo me. They remind me that childhood is a brief, glittering spell, with every headline and “once-in-a-generation” crisis seeming to make it shorter.
My own spell broke on a Tuesday morning in September 2001. At 11, I was just old enough to know something terrible had happened but too young to understand why. We sat at our desks, eyes fixed on the same flickering images that would replay for weeks: smoke, ash, falling bodies, people screaming through the streets. I didn’t yet have the words, but I could feel the fear radiating off every adult in the school. When I got home, the news stayed on until long after bed time. That day, I learned the world could break, and it might never feel whole again.
Since then, catastrophe has been the drumbeat of my generation. School shootings became routine. The “War on Terror” became background noise. We graduated into a recession, lived through a global pandemic and now we are raising children in an era of climate alarms and political turmoil. The losses pile up until they feel like part of the air we breathe.
And now here we are, September 2025, watching ICE raids raze neighborhoods, free speech rights erode and elected officials openly campaign on fear. The air feels heavy again, and I wonder how long I can keep it from settling on my son’s shoulders.
This is the paradox of parenting right now: I want to give him a childhood that feels safe, but I also want to raise him with his eyes open. I want him to hold onto joy, but I also want him to be the kind of person who refuses to look away. Some days I find the balance. Other days, I worry I’m not shielding him enough.
The questions come earlier than you think:
- Why do they call people “illegal”?
- Why would someone even want to have a gun?
- What is an Amber Alert?
- Why would anyone want to steal children?
At school, he’s learning about human migration during the Iron and Bronze Ages. Then he comes home asking why, if migration is what people have always done, some people aren’t allowed to live here anymore?
Parenting in this climate means constant calibration. How much truth can they hold? How do you explain cruelty without handing them despair? How do you raise a child awake to the world without stealing from them the right to believe it can still be good?
This work takes its toll. Most of us already live with anxiety humming just beneath the surface. We scroll headlines in the dark, chewing on dread we can’t digest. We’re still carrying the weight of the last two decades, and now we are tasked with teaching our kids to regulate their nervous systems when our own are frayed.
And yet, the cartwheel moment insists on being noticed. It reminds me that joy still finds its way in.
I thought about how playgrounds are rehearsal spaces for resilience. They’re where kids learn to fall, negotiate, take turns and get back up after scraped knees and hurt feelings. They practice persistence when they try a trick ten times before landing it, and compassion when they invite someone new into the game.
And that even in history’s heaviest hours, children have found ways to play.
That thought keeps me steady on the days the headlines threaten to pull me under: the idea that resilience isn’t just about surviving catastrophe, it’s about insisting on joy in the face of it. It’s about finding one another, again and again, even when the world tells you to retreat into fear.
I am learning that the real work of parenting lies within preparing him to walk into a world that will break his heart and still ask him to care. To prepare him to face hard truths without losing the muscle memory of joy. To give him room to practice being a happy, grieving, curious and furious whole person while I am still close enough to catch him when he falls.
So I sit there in the car line, watching, listening and letting the tears prick at the corners of my eyes.
And I let myself believe, just for a minute, that all is well. That cartwheels will keep happening. That laughter will keep ringing out. That our children might just be strong enough to build something better out of what we hand them.
And maybe that is what resilience really is: a faith that the next generation will keep showing up, keep trying again and keep making new worlds out of the broken pieces we leave behind.
Tips for Practicing Grounded Honesty With Your Kids
Although there isn’t a manual for parenting through collective trauma, psychologists and pediatricians will tell you that honesty matters, and that kids sense more than we think they do.
And that avoiding hard topics can make the fear worse. I’ve learned a few things that help, and I offer them here for anyone else navigating this balance:
Start with what they know. Sometimes children only catch a fragment like a word on TV or something another kids said. Ask what they already know, and then build from there, instead of overwhelming them with everything you know.
Name feelings, not just facts. I tell my son, “Some people are scared right now because their families might be separated. That makes me sad, too.” He doesn’t just need information; he needs to see what compassion looks like.
Give them a role. Powerlessness breeds anxiety, so we talk about what we can do. Writing cards to neighbors, donating toys to local drives, inviting new kids to play at school. Small acts help kids feel less helpless.
Leave room for questions later. I’ve learned not to rush to fill every silence. Sometimes he needs a day before he circles back with, “But what happens if…”
Model nervous system resets. When hard conversations come, we take breaths together, shake our bodies or go for a walk. The goal is not to push the fear down but to let it move through.
Grounded honesty doesn’t mean having perfect answers. And honestly, you’re probably not going to have great answers most of the time. I know I don’t at least.
But what it does mean is showing your kids that it’s okay not to have all the answers, and that they can always come to you when things are scary.
