This year has been an especially tense year related to politics in the United States. “Every year the American Psychological Association takes a look at the leading causes of stress in the U.S…. This year… all the usual suspects like money, health and family are still wearing people down, but one issue is dominating – politics… the future of the nation… 80% of Republicans rated it a top stressor, so did 79% of Democrats and 73% of Independents.” (NPR)

When parents are stressed, we tend to be less patient, get annoyed more quickly – sometimes over-reacting to small things. Our children feel that stress and may wonder if they are doing something wrong that is the reason their parents are unhappy, or may worry that bad things will happen to their family.

If you’re feeling stressed about the election, admit it to your child – let them know that they are right about what they are noticing about your feelings. But also reassure them that they have done nothing wrong and you are not upset at them. Also, reassure them that things will be OK in the end – I know that you yourself may not be feeling confident right now that things will be OK in the long run, but this is a time to dig down for whatever optimism you have, or faith or resilience, in order to reassure your child.

I have an approach for talking to kids about anything that scares them or scares you or raises your anxiety levels high – it’s especially relevant to things we may feel we have little control over (like national elections!).

• Be thoughtful about how much exposure they have to the issue that is concerning
• If they bring it up, or ask a question, don’t avoid it, just answer it briefly with a simple reassuring explanation.
• Talk about how likely (or unlikely) the thing you’re worrying about is to happen.
• Tell them what will be done to prevent bad outcomes as fall-out from that.
• Reassure them that even if bad things happens, people are tough and resilient, and pull together and make it through.

So, to apply that approach to the election:

Be thoughtful about media exposure:

While you might be tempted to doom-scroll media and social media binge for all the most recent updates, try to save that for times your child is not observing you. If you are checking on things, just remind your child that their world is OK, you just have some worries about things in the outside world but that they are still safe and loved.

In 2016, when my child was almost 6, I did something that I wouldn’t recommend you repeat – I came home from work at 8:30 pm on election night and was upset and turned on the TV to watch – he heard it, got out of bed, and came to watch with me. We were all up VERY late that night, upset over election results. (And I imagine that other parents may have had a similar experience on election night 2020 for opposite political reasons.) A better choice would have been for me to turn it off, get him settled for bed, and then do what I needed to do to process the results. And I could have reassured him from a belief that I DO hold, even though it was hard to hold in that moment: as MLK said “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Responding to their questions

Even young children will hear about the election – I remember when George W Bush was up for election (and with the whole Bush v. Gore hanging chads saga) my older kids who were early elementary at the time had lots of questions. Answer questions as simply as possible, then ask them if they have more questions before continuing to info dump your own anxiety on them.

For younger children, say under 8 years old, I would focus as much as I could on optimistic perspectives, reassuring them that they’ll be OK, and focusing on the things in our personal life that we do have control on and not as much about the broader world that we have less control over.

How Likely / Reducing Harm

RIght now, I have a 13 year old who follows me around asking me “the polls are so close, who’s going to win?” I tell him that millions of people around the world want to know that, and nobody has a good answer to that. Then he asks me again, “yeah, I know, but what do you think is going to happen?” I acknowledge that he’s feeling anxious and that it’s hard to sit in uncertainty.

He wants to know what will happen after the election – he has a lot of worries about what things will be like if one candidate wins.

Because my child is a teenager, I talk more openly about what challenges we would likely face over the next four years, and also talk about what people and organizations who are politically aligned with us will be doing to help mitigate the harms. And about the idea of checks and balances – while not perfect by any means, different governmental systems can reduce the most extreme policies.

Resilience

I also talk about how I’m coping with my own worries about that by thinking about all the positive reasons that I think that even if things are hard for a while (especially for certain marginalized groups), over the next many years things will get better. I talk about the ways that our society has progressed over my lifetime and his grandparents’ lifetime – progress is not fast or easy, but it does bend toward justice. We also talk about what we can do as individuals to help with that progress.

Self Care

If you need support processing your worries about this election, reach out to friends and family. Or, if there is political strife within your friends and family, search online for things like Facebook groups or Reddit forums where you can find people who share your views to help you not feel so alone. (Note: if a forum is soothing to you, stay in – if it just escalates your emotions even further, move on from it.) Do the usual self care things – sleep, get outdoors for a walk, eat well. We’ll get through this.

More resources: check out my posts on Reducing Parental meltdowns and handling your anger in the moment.