Our kids are watching pure nastiness. Here’s how to help them | Opinion

• Children are exposed to a toxic political climate, especially through social media.
• This divisive atmosphere negatively impacts children’s mental health, contributing to feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

Jocelyn Hamlar is a Columbus Dispatch Editorial Board community advisor.

Our children are not immune to this toxic plume created by our political climate.

They are in the front row from a very early age, through the pervasiveness of social media in all its forms. It is reported that one in four children has a smartphone by age 8.

Comprising this unhealthy atmosphere are debates and battles, largely between President Donald Trump’s rabid followers known as the MAGA movement and politically liberal populations of Democrats, LGBTQ+, women’s rights organizations, immigrants and people of color overall.

Playground yelling and screaming

These divisions are not new.

 From the earliest days of conflict between liberals and conservatives, Whites and Blacks, gay and straight, Republicans and Democrats, there have been protests of all kinds and conflicts featured on the evening news and in the newspapers were pervasive. 

The difference today is that the tone has degenerated into immature playground yelling and screaming that starts with name-calling and too often ends in violence, verbal and physical.

This is the atmosphere in which we are raising our children today. And if we think they are not paying attention, we are sadly mistaken.

It is important to realize that the stress of this environment is not just felt by adults, but it bleeds into the lives of children as they watch the news or listen to the adults in their lives debating the underlying issues that have riven this country and our communities.

The kids are listening. How can we help them?

In 2023, the Centers for Disease Control found that four in 10 students had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. While that statistic is not proven to be generated by divisive politics, this environment certainly is not helping.

What can we do to help our children navigate this unhealthy vitriol?

Children need safe, neutral spaces to question and discuss the things that affect them on a daily basis. Sometimes families can provide that listening ear and fair perspective, but there are times when a more neutral provider may be more appropriate.

To that end, specially trained child therapists can deliver age-appropriate care to students experiencing stress or anxiety. Such care may be hospital-based, available in free-standing clinics and in what may be an ideal setting are school-based therapeutic programs.

Many therapeutic services can be financially and/or geographically out of reach for families.

The good news is there are child-based therapeutic services available through some school districts. 

For example, The Nationwide Children’s Hospital Behavioral Health School-Based program has worked with central Ohio schools for approximately 25 years, working across 63 school buildings with as many as 40 master’s degree-level therapists. In addition, some suburban school districts have partnered with organizations to provide school-based services.

We can be there for our children if they are showing signs of stress by investigating school- or community-based programs. 

We can also help them by lowering the temperature of our rhetoric or disagreements in the home and in our communities. The political atmosphere will not change anytime soon, but how we help our children deal with it is well within our control and is critical to their well-being and development.

Jocelyn Hamlar is a Columbus Dispatch Editorial Board community advisor.