How to Help Kids Handle Hurt

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One of the toughest jobs I face as a parent is how to help my kids handle hurt. I don’t care whether or not the hurt is physical or emotional (and I know there will be a TON of both of the course of my children’s lives), it breaks my heart as a mom!

Sometimes in an effort to be “SuperParent”, we miss out on being what our kids really need, the parent they’ve always known and loved. In times of hurting, kids don’t want different, they want what they already know. The more you can focus on reminding them of what they know is true, the more they will understand that tragedy is a part of life and they too can triumph over the pain.

In addition to the hurts our kids experience first-hand, there are a slew of others that they will be a by-product of: from things that will literally shatter their world like divorce & family death to learning about the ills of this earth, such as natural disasters and child poverty.

In the nine years I’ve been a parent, we’ve been through our fair share of disasters, both of the child-sized variety and the actual earth-shaking variety. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that my adult-brain rationale is not very comforting to a hurting child.

So I’ve come up with a list of my top three pieces of advice I’ve complied, both from experts and personal experience, to help your kids when they’re hurting. You can read them over on Vanderbilt’s Wishing Well blog…