What Our Kids Are Carrying

From active shooter drills to war, illness, and hate, children today are absorbing more than we often realize. The question is not whether they notice, but how we help them live with what they see.

Last week at dinner with my parents and a close family friend in her 70s, my kids were talking about their day at school, which had included a drill, and then launched into a description of the different emergency drills they practice.

They walked us through the six kinds they know: active shooter drills for when a shooter is believed to be inside the building, different drills for when a threat is outside, weather drills for tornadoes, medical emergency drills, and bomb threat drills. My son, who remembers everything, explained each one step by step, as though he were rehearsing them all over again.

It struck me: this is what childhood sounds like now.

No wonder some kids get scared at night. No wonder their nervous systems are on high alert. These are not abstract ideas. They are routines. Expectations. Part of the ordinary structure of growing up.

And the drills are only one part of the story.

One of my son’s best friends has already lived through life-threatening cancer treatment. He made it through. But children know when life has been fragile. They know when someone their age has faced something terrifying.

My sister lives in Israel with my two nephews and brother-in-law. We speak with them every morning. My nephews have described the bombings, the rush into shelters, and the fear and disruption that become part of daily life when attacks are possible at any moment. My four-year-old nephew, Eli, has already lived through so many periods of conflict that he cannot count them. To him, a “war” is each time there is a bombing, or each time a cousin is deployed again.

And then there is the hate that so many children are becoming aware of far too early.

My kids hear about a swastika drawn at the high school they are planning to attend. They absorb the reality that hatred exists not in a distant history book, but in the communities around them. They hear stories of families torn apart, of people deported without cause, of children watching adults lose safety, resources, and stability overnight.

Children today are paying attention.

They are aware of suffering. They are aware of danger. They are aware of injustice. Many are also aware, in ways that can be both grounding and burdensome, of their own privilege.

And they do not all respond the same way.
My two children each take in the world differently. So do my husband and I. So do the adults around them. Some children ask endless questions. Some store details away quietly. Some seem unfazed until bedtime, when fears surface. Some become vigilant. Some become overwhelmed. Some harden. Some become deeply compassionate.

As adults, our instinct is to protect our children, to keep them safe. But what does safe even mean these days?

I am not entirely sure.

What I do know is that many of the messages we give children, even well-intended ones, can reinforce the idea that life is controllable if you are prepared enough, careful enough, successful enough, or good enough. We teach them to study hard, make good choices, plan ahead, build the right résumé, get into the right school. Much of that has value. Effort matters. Responsibility matters. Preparation matters.
But sometimes, without realizing it, we teach something else too: that if you do everything right, bad things will not happen.

That is comforting, but it is not true.

Bad things happen all the time. Illness happens. Violence happens. Hate happens. Loss happens. Unfairness happens. And for children growing up today, that reality is increasingly visible.

The danger is not only that kids are exposed to hard truths. It is that they may begin to believe they are supposed to predict them, prevent them, or control them. That if they worry enough, rehearse enough, or prepare enough, they can hold uncertainty at bay.

But control is often a false promise.

What actually prepares children for life is not the belief that they can control every outcome. It is adaptability. It is learning how to respond when life is disappointing, unfair, frightening, or unpredictable. It is building the capacity to face what they cannot control without falling apart.

That may be one of the central tasks of parenting right now: helping children distinguish between preparation and illusion, between responsibility and overcontrol, between healthy vigilance and the exhausting belief that they must always anticipate the worst.

It is more important than ever to be the adult in the room for our kids.

And that requires active parenting. It requires paying attention to our children, not only to what they say outright, but to the ways they communicate indirectly: in bedtime fears, irritability, withdrawal, questions that seem small but are not, changes in behavior, and the details they repeat when something has lodged itself in their minds. Our kids are telling us all the time what they are carrying. We have to slow down enough to notice.

If we want children to feel safe, then the responsibility is not only to protect them from large, visible threats. It is also to protect them from the quieter kinds of instability adults can create — poor boundaries, exclusion, and relationships that place children in unfair or uncomfortable positions. Kids are always watching the adults around them. They learn not only from what we say, but from how we behave.

That means helping them learn how to make decisions that are not purely self-serving. It means teaching them to think about other people, to care about their communities, and to act with integrity. It means standing up for what is right even when it is uncomfortable. It means showing them, in concrete ways, what fairness, kindness, courage, and accountability look like.

It also means resisting the temptation to pretend that none of this is happening.
We can try to live in a bubble. We can tell ourselves that if we do not name what is frightening, maybe our children will not feel it. But children are already feeling it. They are already noticing. They are already trying to make sense of a world that often feels scary, unstable, and morally confusing.

Our job is not to eliminate every hard truth. We cannot.

Our job is to help them carry those truths without becoming consumed by them.

We can help them feel less alone in their fear. We can give them language for what they are experiencing. We can teach them how to distinguish danger from discomfort, how to tolerate uncertainty, how to respond rather than panic, and how to stay human in the face of cruelty.

We can also help them understand that strength does not come from controlling reality. It comes from meeting reality. From bending without breaking. From learning that even in a world full of risk, they can adapt, think clearly, stay grounded, and move forward.

And maybe most importantly, we can help them believe that while the world can be frightening, they are not powerless within it.

Kids are scared. Adults are scared too.

But if we want our children to grow into people who make the world better, then we have to give them more than reassurance. We have to give them values. We have to give them examples. We have to give them honest conversation, moral clarity, and the steady presence of adults willing to lead with courage.

This is what it means to raise children in this day and age:

not pretending the world is safe, and not pretending we can control all that is dangerous, but helping them become the kind of people who can adapt, respond, and make the world safer, kinder, and more just.

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By Dr. Ariella Soffer
Clinical Psychologist, CEO and Founder of Soffer & Associates