The morning of May 22, I did what I do every morning. Upon peeling my eyes open, I reached for my phone. I checked my email first and then my Facebook feed. That’s when a headline caught my attention and shocked me out of my morning fog. It read, “Deadly explosion at Ariana Grande concert.” This year’s news has been full of tragedies. Hardly a day goes by without reading about bombings, shootings, and other acts of violence occurring all over the world. But for the first time, the news felt terrifyingly personal. Approximately a year before the Manchester suicide bombing occurred, I surprised my two daughters with tickets to an Ariana Grande concert. My oldest, 14 at the time, had already attended a couple of small shows headlining singers who spent the majority of their act screaming inaudibly into the microphone. Her 11-year-old younger sister had begun to ask when she, too, could go to a concert – a first I was beginning to dread. When I heard that Ms. Grande was coming to a stadium close to us, I jumped on the opportunity. Both of my girls loved her. She was one of the few artists who offered a performance geared toward tweens and teens that promised to keep it clean and empowering, while delivering killer theatrics. The show did not disappoint. To date, that evening is one of my favorite parenting experiences. There was a sweetness to making my way through the concert hall with the swarms of excited, young girls all decked out in cat ears and glittery whiskers they had painted across their still round cheeks. The show was the stuff young dreams are made of. Highlights included Ariana floating above the crowd on a fluffy white cloud and singing her most popular songs as her fans swayed and cheered from below. At one point, she played a touching audio clip of her grandfather giving her advice about life. It was a performance that my girls and I both relished, for very different reasons. On that morning in May as I stared down at my phone, my stomach swam and sank. I felt sick knowing that if I were to see a photo of the victims, their faces would resemble my own daughters’ faces. “This could have happened to my children,” I thought. I have two adolescent girls. I worry about a lot. Every day, I have to make fast, smart decisions as the requests roll in for outings with friends and parties that don’t include mom tagging along. I call parents. I research venues and movies and music artists. The Ariana Grande concert seemed like a slam-dunk for some good, safe fun. If asked, there was a good chance I would have let my girls go without me. In the days following the bombing, I avoided the news. I couldn’t bear to think of the victims. When I gently brought it up to my girls, it was clear they couldn’t either. They quickly brushed my comments and questions off and brought the discussion to a close. After a couple weeks, the news coverage slowed to an eventual stop with the number of victims finally totaled. My kids never brought the topic up, but small changes in their behavior revealed the toll the event had taken. My oldest, who usually enjoyed the freedom of using public transit, began to call for rides, and her sister stopped asking about attending large events. Close to two months have passed since the Manchester bombing. As it fades into the past, I can feel the coveted comfort of that false sense of safety returning. I know it won’t be long before the requests start rolling in again. Parties and concerts cannot be put off forever. It’s only a matter of time before I have to start making those lightning-quick decisions. The question is how do families move forward with confidence after events like this one take place? Elizabeth Perkins is a marriage and family therapist and psychotherapist based in San Diego, California. She suggests that parents should try to look at the world as a canvas on which many different things are painted. She explains, “Like looking at a painting, what you focus on is what begins to pop off the canvas and come to life.” She says that young people model their coping mechanisms on their caregivers and their social environment: “To be a parent who acknowledges the scary stuff of life but chooses, rather, to really bring into focus all of the healing and help still left in the world creates that same lens for children.” Perkins shared the following tips for parenting after a traumatic event:
