Episode 2: Combating Violence in Children’s Media with Bob VandePol

00;00;09;01 – 00;00;47;09

Rick Hoaglund

Welcome to OnTopic with Empathia. I’m your host, Rick. Today on the show, we’re following up with last week’s episode with Bob in which we talked about children being directly impacted by a violent incident and supporting children through these difficult times. Bob has over 36 years of experience in the crisis management industry. He’s active as a keynote speaker and he’s been published in journals on crisis response to tragedy. Today, Bob and I are going to discuss how to talk to kids when they see violence on the news or hear about it at school. You can find part one of this conversation on our website, Empathia.com. Hi, Bob. Welcome back!

 

00;00;47;16 – 00;00;49;14

Bob Vandepol

Rick! Honored. Glad to be here.

 

00;00;49;22 – 00;01;17;26

Rick Hoaglund

On today’s podcast, we’re going to be discussing should caring adults talk about media reports of violence with their children? What is age appropriate conversation on this topic? How can caring adults talk about what children witnessed in ways that provide stability and calmness? And how can these experiences be turned into a positive learning experience? Bob, tell me a little bit about how are children exposed to violence indirectly?

 

00;01;18;17 – 00;03;13;05

Bob Vandepol

24/7! Y’know, how many parents haven’t had the discussion about is it more violence today or are we just bombarded because of the perpetual media exposure that we face wherever we go? And it used to be in our living rooms watching television, and now we carry it in our pocket. We carry hundreds of acts of violence every day in our pocket, as do our children, and man, I wish you and I were talking about something else, because talking to kids about tragedies, about violence. You know, that’s a responsibility most adults would love to duck. Wouldn’t we love to avoid it and to live in a world where kids never had to worry about fear, pain, death, sadness, people willfully hurting someone else. I’d love it if kids didn’t have to have drills about active shootings and didn’t have to be cautioned about abduction and trafficking and all of those kind of things and inappropriate touch. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But kids are and it’s become such a prevalent part of their world that they’re trying to sort out, is this real? Is this not real? But it’s scary and it’s different. Rick, you and I grew up watching cartoons. They were violent! They were really violent, but they always recovered immediately and popped right back up and Wiley Coyote chased Road Runner again. Tom and Jerry smacked each other and kept on going. And so we watched some of that. But it’s different now. Now it’s people and it’s more real and more prevalent. And it feels like everything that happens in China is in my backyard.

 

00;03;13;17 – 00;03;22;00

Rick Hoaglund

Does this inundation that we’ve talked about, what is the impact on a child and does that ever desensitize them to what violence truly is?

 

00;03;22;12 – 00;04;42;29

Bob Vandepol

You know, it has different reactions to different children. Some it does with television was our primary media. There was a lot of debate. Does does violent TV produce violence in children? And they found with some kids. Some kids, it made them more likely to become violent themselves. And they watch something on TV and they were at an increased risk to copycat it and do it to others. A lot of kids did not have that reaction. And then there was another set of kids for whom it made them feel much more vulnerable. Could this happen to me? In TV, there was there was a big switch in that initially, and it had to do with the direction of the camera. And there was research that talked about when it came from the perception of the victim. Yes, it was frightening because the bad guy or the monster is coming toward me. And then they found out that it was even more frightening for many people if the focus of the camera came from the monster or from the bad guy. Because now in our brain, it’s like, I could do that. That’s me. And that was even more frightening. You have more of experience in media than me, I see. You’re probably nodding your head.

 

00;04;43;03 – 00;05;16;27

Rick Hoaglund

Oh, I am. And the reason I bring this up is because when I was in high school, this’ll tell how old I am, but I’m going to say I went to see the movie Halloween. And Halloween was one of the first, if not the first. It may have been the first to show from the killer’s perspective, like through his mask and what he was doing. To this day, when I hear the music that was played during that, it scares me to death. Like it is. It is a true fear. And so I guess I get what you’re saying. But for a child, what age should they be exposed to? Things like that?

 

00;05;17;06 – 00;07;00;28

Bob Vandepol

There’s no age. It has to do more with the kid. And this is again, where parent needs to know their kid. And it’s a struggle because it’s so common to play the shoot em up games and they’re gruesome and they’re gory. And you get points for it. You win by being more violent. And I have a huge problem with that. And so with the children over whom I have any influence, I don’t allow those. I don’t allow those in my presence. And I strongly encourage them. And I try to turn it and say, imagine if that was your family member. Imagine if that was your cousin. Imagine if that was your friend. And it was very easy just to do this. But did you know that for some people, playing games like this makes it more likely that they will become a mass shooter? Not everybody, but nobody’s smart enough to know who will and who won’t. And so I don’t want to risk it. I want to come at it much more from a perspective of people are valuable. All people are valuable. All people have value. And we need to keep them safe. And all life is valuable. And we need not to diminish or make a joke out of the end of anybody’s life. I can’t imagine if it was your grandmother. Imagine if it was your niece. What would it be like for you? So I think it’s an opportunity for empathy training. So I’m not going to say, oh, yeah, when somebody is 11 years and 2 months, that’s when it’s okay for them to do it, because it’s not like that. There are some adults who shouldn’t play that those games.

 

00;07;01;19 – 00;07;34;00

Rick Hoaglund

So are you looking for any particular markers of maturity? And I know I’m delving into this a little bit deeper than maybe, you know, we may want to go, but is there something that tells me that when I’m talking to my child that they need more, that they need more information? So my child might be ten years old? I’m talking to them. They’re very afraid to go to school because there was a mass shooting in clear across the country. So how do I handle that? What am I looking for in their reaction that tells me I need to do more?

 

00;07;34;04 – 00;11;43;12

Bob Vandepol

You know, I’m going to go back to what we talked about. In addition one just a little bit about how important it is to know your child and to know what’s normal for them. And you may have three children and it won’t be the same thing. That’s normal for each of them. They’re all different. But to know your child’s baseline, if something happens and it’s on media, if there’s a school shooting. again, start by listening. Listen to what they already know. Very frequently they will have a lot of misinformation. And so it’s important to hear that, especially if they’re younger. Little kids are lousy at geography. And so if there’s a mass shooting in California, like we just had, they may live in Ohio, but still be very concerned because to them, it could be right here. And so it’s important to listen so that you get a sense of how do they view it right now. There’s been a while ago, but when 9/11 happened, there were kids all over who saw the planes hitting the building and thought that the planes hit hundreds of buildings because they kept seeing the same thing over and over again. And so it was even scarier for them than it already was, which was a horrible thing because they did have it. So I think you start by listening. They don’t need every graphic detail. They don’t need to know anything gory. They need to know reality. But you start by listening and you hear how are they understanding what they may have heard at school or from the graphic images? And then I think it’s really important, again, to have trust in your relationship with your child so that you can provide very clear, simple answers, especially when kids are shaken. Now, this is true of all of us. I want to back up just a minute. When any human being is impacted by something disturbing on up to it being traumatic temporarily, we all get a little dumber and the parts of our brain, it’s our prefrontal cortex and some other parts of the brain tied to it that help us to think abstractly and to problem solve and to multitask and to see the gray area between black and white takes a back seat to a part of our brain. That’s not very smart, but it’s fast, and it’s reflexive and it leads quickly to fight, to flight, to freeze. Okay, so this is true of all of us. It’s especially true for kids. So as parents, so often we think, what do I say in this conversation? What do I say? And it’s like we have to have some articulate lecture on violence. We don’t because every parent has also said, my kids don’t hear a word I say under best conditions. That’s especially true if they’re frightened. They don’t hear you, but they watch. And their ability to read nonverbals, their ability to read how you’re approaching this is laser focused. And so if they sense that you’re terrified of this yourself, that only amps theirs because you’re supposed to be the adult that keeps them safe. If they feel as though you’re ducking this conversation, how do they y’know, interpret it? They can interpret it as, Wow, it must be so bad. Mom or dad or whomever doesn’t even want to talk about it, or they don’t really care about me. I’m as vulnerable as I thought I was because they’re not even having this conversation with me. So how you respond, not what you say, but how you respond, and you take the time to sit down and have a calm conversation with them either says you’re safer than you thought you were or you’re more dangerous than you thought you were.

 

00;11;43;12 – 00;12;40;17

Rick Hoaglund

You were talking about ensuring that your child feels safe. I mean, that’s been a theme in today’s conversation as well as the one that we did in the first episode. How do you do that? How do you provide a safe environment for your kids when there’s all this bad stuff in the world? If you open a newspaper, you turn on the news, you watch on TV. As you said, in fact, I found some statistics that says 60% of all TV programs contain a violent scene and half of those violent scenes have an attractive hero type character doing the violence. And 50% of the violent scene shows victims without any pain. And 40% is done with humor. So I’m just kind of throwing that all out there. You’re going to see it everywhere, you’ve got- and statistically, it’s proven that it is everywhere. And at least on television, it’s probably in books. It’s probably in magazines and on the news as well. How do you tell your kids, Yeah, we have a safe environment for you.

 

00;12;41;03 – 00;14;10;28

Bob Vandepol

I think, again, depending upon the age of the child, if you’re talking to a ninth grader, you can talk with them about, you know, the media has discovered that they sell better when they have things that are dramatic and things that are fast action. And they found that violence sells. And so, yes, we live in a world where violence does occur. But I want you to know that if you watch TV, it’s saturated because that sells and you can lend a bit of a voice of reason and reality of you don’t want to deny the fact that violence occurs, but you want to provide some reality. And so maybe it can be. Yes, that happened. That was there. Yes. We need to be careful. Yes, it’s an infrequent act, but it does happen. I want you to know that you’re safe with me and you can talk with me. And I’m not going to judge you. I’m not going to call you chicken. I’m not going to blame you if you take risks that maybe are beyond what I would want to a degree. You’re going to be safe in this relationship with me. I’m here for you. If there are threats and risks in our neighborhood that at your school, with whatever circle you’re involved in, I want you to know I’ve got your back. I’m going to do everything that I can to help keep you safe.

 

00;14;11;23 – 00;14;47;05

Rick Hoaglund

You actually brought up 9/11. All that lived through 9/11 can tell our own stories about how we heard about 9/11 and where we were. And it’s kind of one of those flashbulb moments that that lots of us carry. And some of us were in a classroom when that happened. And so teachers were forced to talk about it. They were compelled because it was the news of the day and their children were going to be exposed to it no matter what. How do you go about explaining something like that, especially if you’re a teacher or a you know, you could be a religious leader. It could be a leader of a troop of a scouts. I mean, where do you go? How do you talk about that?

 

00;14;47;26 – 00;17;09;17

Bob Vandepol

I think it’s really important. Again, I’m going to go back to you need to model concern and you need to model strength and you need to model commitment to to be there. Even teenagers, you know, even though they won’t admit it, look to their parents for that safety, you know, and and kids will take their cue off of whoever they see as being the leader. This is going to date me also. But I was in third grade when JFK was shot. And frankly, for all of us little third graders who our president was was not that big of a deal. And the fact that our president got shot was shocking, but it didn’t make any of us feel more afraid where we were. But I will never, never, never, ever, ever forget hearing the principal, because you always wear these little clips on your shoes coming down the hallway and we all look like who’s in trouble now? And he called our teacher out into the hallway. And I will never forget her shriek, her dropping her clipboard and her sinking to the floor, wailing at the news. And based upon the reaction of that adult, all of us little third graders looked at each other like, Whoa, now we’re in danger. And so I think I think it’s important that any adult that’s in a leadership position, one acknowledges what happened. Don’t duck it if you don’t get and pretend it didn’t happen. Trust is gone. The children need to know that you’re tough enough to handle it. And yes, you’re concerned. And yes, you respond emotionally. Maybe you cry. That’s okay. It’s sad. School shootings and shootings and the act of violence is sad. So okay for you to be angry. It’s okay for that. But they need to know that they can trust you to deal with it in a healthy, safe way. And again, they’re not listening, but they’re watching and these events, as sad and tragic as they are, are also tremendous teaching opportunities because you have their undivided attention. And that doesn’t happen often.

 

00;17;10;07 – 00;17;47;24

Rick Hoaglund

Does the way that the news is presented to the audience. So an audience of teens, an audience of children. Does that have anything to do with how a child will take it? And the reason I bring this up is because teenagers get most of their news. According to studies from social media, that would be like YouTube and other social media outlets out there. And it’s not as heavily scrutinized when it goes onto social media as what we might see on the nightly news or even a cable news channel. Should that be a concern to parents? Is that something they should? I’m not going to say limit, but maybe I should say limit. I don’t know.

 

00;17;48;10 – 00;19;38;21

Bob Vandepol

I would say limit. Maybe I’m the meanest dad in the block, but I would say limit and scrutinize and be tech savvy enough to be able to do so. And, you know, we all want our kids to like us and we all want to be the nicest, caring adults. But that doesn’t mean letting kids do what’s unhealthy. You wouldn’t let your kids eat whatever they wanted to eat, drink whatever they wanted to eat, drive whatever they wanted to drive. You wouldn’t let them do those things. And so why would we let those things into our own kids bedrooms? I think it’s absolutely okay. When you talked about, yeah, there are a lot of studies that came out that talked about how media handling of teenage suicides was either effective in mitigating copycats or in making them more likely. And they found that if it was on page one with a picture of the kid and a manifesto and a gruesome, sensationalized description of what they did, it increased risk for some children. And if it was handled responsibly in a way, and it used language that was not inflammatory and it didn’t make the kid a hero, but it focused on grief at the loss, then it dropped the rates. The same thing in talking with youth about something like suicide. If you treat them as relatively mature, responsible, whatever their age is, and have a real calm but sincere and strong conversation with them, they’re less likely to act in a way that’s destructive and violent.

 

00;19;39;21 – 00;20;08;00

Rick Hoaglund

How do you get over the fear that by talking to your child about suicide or any other violent activity, that you might actually be encouraging them to do this? I mean, I think there is a fear to that, especially I’ll be honest, around suicide or gun violence also, that you might actually be in some way contributing to that child’s state of mind, that maybe it’s okay, maybe they should want to do that. I don’t know. How do you get over that fear?

 

00;20;08;09 – 00;20;50;11

Bob Vandepol

You know, I’ve done these lectures for school districts and there will always be parents who say, Don’t talk about it. You’ll give them the idea. And it’s like, Are you kidding me? They already have the idea and it’s more powerful if it’s a secret. If we can talk about it, shine a light on it and take a look at it, now we can make decisions about it. It’s about how you have the conversation. And if it’s I’m tough enough to handle it, I care deeply about you. I want you to be safe. Let’s problem solve. I’m here to listen and answer your questions and give a few tips. It helps.

 

00;20;51;04 – 00;21;11;25

Rick Hoaglund

How do you know when it’s time to get further help? Meaning that I think my child might need a therapist or some other tool that would help them get through this. What are the signs that you’re looking for in your child that I need to actually get some help for? I can’t handle this myself.

 

00;21;12;14 – 00;22;07;21

Bob Vandepol

You know, I think, again, knowing your child, knowing what the benchmark is, but if you see kids who are more emotional than usual, especially tearful or irritable, younger kids express fear, depression, more irritability, as they get older, they’re little more likely to cry. Also, if you see changes in appetite, you see changes in sleep rates drop off. A lot of times there will be somatic complaints, tummy aches, headaches. If you see a lack of interest in things that they were interested in before, if you see them isolate. It’s knowing your kid and having that. And wow, this is this has changed. Let’s talk to somebody. Let’s engage a professional in this. It can’t hurt. It can’t hurt it. It can be so helpful. It could be lifesaving for them or for those around them.

 

00;22;08;03 – 00;22;14;13

Rick Hoaglund

So what are the resources for parents other than a therapist? Is there anything out there that might be helpful for a parent?

 

00;22;15;05 – 00;23;10;02

Bob Vandepol

Just like we’re bombarded with other negative resources, we have just as many here to. And so a good place to start is school. A good place to start is there because no sense recreating the wheel. And they may have programs that are already working and you can just support them. Faith communities often have resources too, so if the kid is, for example, part of the youth group of some sort that can be their coaches bosses. But online, there are many, many, many, many resources. And if you look at reducing teen violence, if you look at dealing with anxiety, if you look at depression and anxiety, all of those things, if you’re employed and you have an employee assistance program, they can call a 24/7 number and talk to a counselor completely confidentially and get some solutions or take the edge off.

 

00;23;10;26 – 00;23;14;26

Rick Hoaglund

If I’m a teacher, is it a good idea to reach out to the parents?

 

00;23;15;12 – 00;23;38;22

Bob Vandepol

Yes. Yes. Again, not every parent is the same. Ideally, parents would be immensely grateful. Thank you for having the courage and the caring for my child to reach out. Not every parent is going to do that. Some will be defensive. Some will minimize. Do it anyway. Do it anyway.

 

00;23;39;02 – 00;23;58;27

Rick Hoaglund

So if you’re a parent and what were your strategies for making sure that your children saw age appropriate violence because you can’t avoid violence. But what are your strategies for that going forward so that we can leave our podcast listeners with some ideas, like here’s some things that we can do to help protect our child against the effects of violence.

 

00;23;59;08 – 00;25;12;14

Bob Vandepol

I may have been the meanest dad on the block, but there were certain shows that my kids couldn’t watch. And when I saw incidents of violence that was a time where we really talked it through. I wanted to teach empathy and so really hammered on. What do you think it was like for that person? What do you think it was like for their siblings? What do you think it was like for their cousin? What do you think it was like? Is there anything that we could do that would be helpful if it was in our communities or even if not? Could we send money? Could we send a card? People of Faith. Could we pray for them? Could we do something that says, I’m not the center of the universe and I have an opportunity to make other people’s life better or worse? And so I think acts of violence, again, are a teachable moment. Would you rather have the kids attention when it’s so hard to get otherwise? But no, if you’re a parent, you’re in charge. You’re not their friend. I hope you have a friendly relationship and it becomes a friendship as adults, but they don’t need another friend. They need somebody that they can trust to make tough calls for them.

 

00;25;13;10 – 00;25;15;16

Rick Hoaglund

Is there anything you’d like to add to our conversation today?

 

00;25;16;14 – 00;26;45;28

Bob Vandepol

Boy, I’d love to encourage people to also share good news, because so often what we’re inundated with is the worst and most dramatic and the most awful. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if instead our conversations and our communications and our social media and even, you know, sponsored television or whatever else might be carried more news about people caring and being compassionate for each other? And one more thing is that I didn’t talk about was that don’t just tell kids not to be violent. That’s like if you have a three year old with scissors, you take the scissors and you give them something else, right? So you don’t take something away from them without giving something else. So also, as a caring adult, it’s important to give kids skills. How do you resolve conflicts? How do you handle it when you’re angry? How do you handle it when you’re afraid? How do you handle it when you disagree? How do you handle it when somebody else is a jerk? How do you do those kind of things? And how can you use me? I was very comfortable helping my kids learn refusal skills that painted me as the bad guy. And they’d say, Oh, no, you don’t know my dad. I did that. I’d be grounded for a month. And that’s okay. If it got them out of the situation where bad things could have happened, like violence, that was a good thing.

 

00;26;46;07 – 00;26;55;03

Rick Hoaglund

Is this all part of sort of building a resilient person, someone that knows how to bounce back because they know that there’s options? Is that all a part of that?

 

00;26;55;18 – 00;27;48;10

Bob Vandepol

Yeah. You know, resilience is a capacity. It’s not a characteristic in some capacity. It’s intentional things that you do to prepare for adapt to and grow from hardship. And so parents having the conversations to prepare for things like violence in the media. Now, how do I handle it in the moment if I’m feeling afraid to go to school? Because there was a shooting at school? How do I get through today? What are some skills that I can do? And there’s breathing to having support people, to a buddy plan, to being able to text dad if you’re scared, whatever it may be. And then how do I y’know, grow through it too to make my world a better place and to play a role in that? That’s a resilient kid.

 

00;27;49;01 – 00;27;56;25

Rick Hoaglund

I think that’s a good place for us to leave it. Thank you, Bob, and thank you for both conversations and I appreciate you being here with us today. Thank you!

 

00;27;56;25 – 00;27;58;11

Bob Vandepol

You as well, Rick! Take care.

 

00;27;58;24 – 00;29;07;21

Rick Hoaglund

Next time on OnTopic, we’ll be talking about Compassion Fatigue with Phil Chard. We’re really looking forward to this conversation because Phil is incredibly knowledgeable around this topic – you’ll definitely want to listen in. To hear that episode and other episodes of OnTopic with Empathia, visit our website, Empathia.com. Follow us on social media at Empathia, and subscribe to OnTopic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick. Thanks for listening to OnTopic with Empathia.