There was a lesson Sept. 11 taught with unbearable clarity: Ordinary life is not ordinary. How do we talk to children about that?
We’re still living in the world 9/11 created
The impacts of the horrific terrorism attacks of 9/11 continue to be felt here in America. Have we learned the lessons of that fateful day?
- Parents cannot promise children a world without fear, grief or uncertainty. But we should teach children they do not have to face difficult feelings like fear or grief alone.
- Instead of false reassurances, adults can offer honest comfort and support to children.
- Emotional intelligence – the ability to recognize, name and regulate emotions – helps people process difficult feelings in ways that help, rather than harm.
Families will wake up on Sept. 11 to images we know all too well, even 25 years after the terrorist attacks. For those who lived through it, those images may reopen feelings that never fully disappeared.
For young people who know the event only as history, the images could provoke fear, confusion and questions about why this day still carries such weight.
Our instinct may be to explain, reassure or protect children from those feelings. But Sept. 11, 2001, teaches us something more important: We cannot promise children a world without fear, grief or uncertainty. We can teach them that they do not have to face those feelings alone.
What we learned talking to New York families after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
We learned that lesson just weeks after the attacks, in a room full of frightened parents at a New York City public school, while spending time with families throughout the tri-state region. Everyone was still living inside the shock of what had happened. The world they thought they understood had suddenly become less certain, and they were trying to decide how much of that uncertainty their children could bear.
Again and again, they asked:
Can I reassure my child they are safe? Can I tell them nothing like this will happen again?
We understood the longing behind the question. What parent would not want to say yes?
But we asked them something in return: Do you feel certain that nothing like this will ever happen again? Do you feel completely safe yourselves?
They did not.
Neither did we. So we told them not to offer their children a reassurance they themselves did not believe. Instead, they could offer something honest and comforting:
The adults who love you – at home, at school and in your community – will do everything they can to keep you safe. We will be here with you. Whatever happens, you will not have to face it alone.
Twenty-five years later, we would give parents much the same answer.
Be your child’s emotional ally when talking about 9/11
We can help children learn they are capable of having difficult feelings without being ruled by them. They can experience fear without being consumed by it, anger without turning it into cruelty, grief without losing their capacity for joy, and uncertainty without surrendering hope.
Children today are growing up amid war, terrorism, mass shootings and political rage delivered in real time through the screens in their hands. So the question Sept. 11 leaves us with is not only what we remember but also what we have learned, and what we choose to practice.
One lesson is especially clear: We are not built to carry everything alone.
We need people who can stay near us when life becomes frightening or painful. We need people who listen without rushing to fix us, who are kind without pretending everything is fine and who do not turn away.
We call these people emotion allies.
An emotion ally does not promise that nothing bad will happen. They offer something more credible: If something bad happens, I will be here.
A frightened child who encounters a steady adult learns that fear does not have to become panic. A young person whose anger is acknowledged without being inflamed learns that strong feelings do not have to become cruelty.
Before children can regulate emotions independently, they often learn to regulate them in relationship with the adults around them. Over time, that steady presence can become part of their own inner voice.
We can teach young people how to find an emotion ally and how to become one: to listen, stay curious, withhold judgment and remain present when there is no easy solution.
Emotional intelligence helps us process information
That is where emotional intelligence becomes essential.
Emotional intelligence is not about being cheerful or suppressing difficult feelings. It is the ability to recognize, understand, name, express and regulate emotions in ways that help rather than harm us.
It begins with permission to feel. Difficult emotions are not bad emotions. They are part of being human, and they carry information.
Fear can alert us to danger. Anger can tell us something is wrong. Grief honors what and whom we have loved.
Emotions contain information, not instructions. Emotional intelligence helps us decide what to do with that information.
These skills cannot be reserved for catastrophe. They have to be practiced in ordinary life. We practice emotional intelligence in the small moments so it is available to us in the large ones.
Show children how fear and courage can respectfully coexist
The same is true of resilience. We often talk about resilience as though it were emotional toughness some people possess and others do not. But research, including the work of psychologist George Bonanno, suggests something more nuanced: Many people who experience loss or potentially traumatic events struggle, grieve, adapt and continue.
Resilience does not mean being untouched by what happened. It means finding a way to keep living while carrying what has happened.
People grieve and parent. They feel frightened and still work, study, create, pray, laugh, love and repair. They may never “move on.” But they move forward. Resilience grows through relationships and emotional skills – through learning: I can feel this. I can deal with this. I can ask for help.
That distinction matters because children now encounter suffering at extraordinary speed. School shootings, terrorist attacks, wars and devastated cities arrive on the same devices that bring birthday photographs and dance videos.
Suffering can feel like content. People can become categories. Tragedy can become one more thing to scroll past. So resilience must mean more than enduring terrible things. It must also mean preserving our capacity to care.
That, too, is part of emotional intelligence. The goal is not simply to feel better. The goal is to deal with feeling in ways that help us think clearly, act wisely and preserve our own dignity and the dignity of others.
Children today know Sept. 11 largely as inherited memory. They did not stand beneath that impossibly blue sky. They did not see the flyers covering walls and lampposts or watch families searching for people who would never come home.
They inherit the story from us.
We owe them a way of remembering that does not harden into fear or hatred – one showing that courage can coexist with fear, grief with joy, and anger with respect for another person’s humanity.
9/11 taught us to cherish life. We can pass that on to children.
There was another lesson Sept. 11 taught with unbearable clarity: Ordinary life is not ordinary.
Thousands of people woke up that morning, poured coffee, kissed someone goodbye, rushed for a train, boarded an airplane or walked into an office assuming they would come home that night.
Many did not.
For a while, we understood how fragile an ordinary day can be. We called people. We went home. We held our children longer. We told people we loved them.
We understood that the people waiting for us at the end of the day were not background characters in our busy lives. They were our lives.
So, when we think back to that room of frightened parents, our answer remains the same. No, we cannot promise children that nothing terrible will ever happen. But we can give them something sturdier than false certainty.
We can give them the skills to understand what they feel without letting every feeling determine what they do. We can help them find people who will stand beside them and teach them how to become those people for someone else.
And we can teach them something Sept. 11 reminded all of us, however briefly, to know: Cherish the extraordinary people you are still lucky enough to come home to.
Look up when they walk through the door. Listen when they speak. Tell them, while you can, that they matter.
We cannot promise our children a life without fear, grief or loss. But we can give them permission to feel, the skills to deal with feeling, and people who help them remember they never have to carry it all alone.
Robin Stern, PhD, is the cofounder and senior adviser to the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. She is the author of “The Gaslight Effect” and “The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide,” and host of “The Gaslight Effect Podcast.” Marc Brackett, PhD, is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yale’s Child Study Center. He is the author of “Permission to Feel” and “Dealing with Feeling,” which is also the name of his podcast. Opinions are those of the authors and do not reflect those of Yale School of Medicine.