What I Told My Four Year-Old Daughter About the Mass Murder in Uvalde, Texas

Children are smarter and more resilient than we think.

First things first: I am not a child psychologist/psychiatrist. I am only the father of an American little girl. This is how I’m dealing with her questions about what happened. This is not advice. If you or your child exhibit signs of emotional or mental distress over the incident in Texas, please seek care. Talk to your healthcare provider, your child’s pediatrician, or contact an organization that can provide you with help and guidance.

Although I’ve been avoiding most news coming out of Uvalde, Texas, after the mass murder incident there, my four year-old daughter caught on that something happened. I don’t know if she heard it at daycare, or in the quick news breaks between songs as we drive. She heard children were hurt and killed, and asked if the parents of those children were sad. “Yes,” I told her. “Their hearts are broken.”
“Because they won’t see their kids ever again?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Because a bad guy hurt the kids?”
“Yes,” I answered.

She was quiet for a while after asking, and then she went back to playing. A few hours later, she returned with more questions. “Daddy, did the police take the bad guy to jail?”
“The one who hurt those children?”
“Yeah.”
“No, he’s dead, honey. The police killed him.”
“So he can’t hurt anyone…