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More than a month has passed since the Guadalupe River flood claimed the lives of dozens of people, including many children.
That traumatic catastrophe still haunts the residents rebuilding their lives, and many children returning to their schools may carry that trauma into their classrooms. So experts want parents to monitor their children for those signs of grief, and they offer advice on how to handle it.
Laurel Williams, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, explained that grief presents differently in children. She also explained how parents can help.
"First, is really make sure, as a parent, you feel that you can be in a good space mentally," she said, "and if you need help with that, then lean on your loved ones. Lean on the support mechanism you have so that you feel that you have some sense about what to do next."
Williams added that adults have a different perspective on traumatic events and skills on how to process them. Children may present as if they don't care or aren't affected. She said that they do — they just process it differently.
"Sometimes parents actually feel frustrated that the young person doesn't seem to care, or doesn't seem to be as bothered by it as they are, because they seem to have moved on," Williams said. "If it's not sort of immediately in the child's mind regularly, it is normal for them to move on unless, of course, the trauma occurred directly to them or somebody that they know really closely."
Children under the age of 6 don't have a true understanding of what death is, in the sense of it being permanent, she said.
"From their perspective, they may not be upset, or they might be upset only at specific times, and then other times they seem like they don't have a care in the world. That's normal for somebody in that age group," Williams said. "When you start to get into like the elementary age group, they do have a sense that death is permanent, so they can have a longer period of being sad. But once again, they're often really worried about, are they going to be okay?"
She added that parents can expect children who weren't as affectionate before to be more affectionate after the traumatic event. They may expect more hugs and physical contact, and they want to make sure their parents are still there. Kids may also express their anxiety by saying that their heads or stomachs hurt.
Williams explained it in more detail: "The age group of younger kids — they're going to have more physical symptoms. So they may not say, 'I feel anxious, I feel nervous, I feel scared.' They may say, 'my stomach hurts, my head hurts, my leg hurts.' So they will often feel their stress and anxiety in their physical symptoms more than they'll talk about how they're thinking."
She said that kids are always watching their parents, so the way adults present their emotions will teach them how to express theirs. It's also important to ask children how they're feeling.
Williams also said that kids may feel survivor's guilt, especially those who were supposed to attend Camp Mystic, where the floodwaters killed multiple young people.
"It's good to say, 'hey, you know you didn't get to go to camp this year. What was that like for you? How are you feeling about that?' " she explained. "So it's much better for a parent to not lead them with questions like already knowing what the child feels, but instead asking, 'Well, what are you thinking about that? How are you feeling about that?' "
As kids go back to school, Williams recommended that teachers continue to watch their students for behavioral shifts and that they work with parents to watch for the signs of grief and give kids some sense of normal.
"The layers that the school should be supporting the teacher, so the teachers have a sense of what we're going to do as a community to support, particularly for those schools where they know that children or teachers were lost because of the floods," Williams said. "So I would just say, really, what helps a lot of people, including adults, is, you know, getting back to a structure, getting back to a routine, and, you know, not lingering and talking about things too significantly."
She stressed that parents should always speak to their primary care providers if they have concerns about their children.
