What to Say When You Do Not Know What to Say

Issue#35

There are questions we carry quietly as parents.

The ones that live in the in between moments. The car ride home. The silence after lights out. The look on their face that asks something we do not quite know how to answer.

How do I show up for them when I am barely holding it together myself? How do I know if what they are feeling is normal? How do I talk about the scary things without making them scarier?

I have been holding these questions for a while. And when I posted them in several parenting groups asking what other parents were wondering about, something remarkable happened. The responses came flooding in. Not just a few. Dozens. From moms and dads in the thick of it, all carrying some version of the same quiet weight.

That told me something important. We are not alone in not knowing. And we deserve real, thoughtful answers.

And I found exactly the right person to help us think through them together.

Dr. Katerina Levy is a pediatric psychologist dedicated to helping children and families navigate the emotional challenges of medical illness. She supports children, parents, and caregivers through evidence-based approaches tailored to their unique needs. Her scholarly work has focused on developing bibliotherapy as a therapeutic tool, and she is the author of two therapeutic storybooks.

Her book The Healing Garden: A Story About Coping with Childhood Cancer helps young readers build resilience, process difficult emotions, and feel less alone during challenging times.

🌐 drkaterinalevy.com

📱 Instagram: @drkaterinalevy

🎵 TikTok: @drkaterinalevy

📖 The Healing Garden is available on Amazon: a.co/d/09OhUnrm

The questions below came directly from parents in real parenting communities who wanted honest, grounded guidance. I am so grateful Dr. Katerina took the time to answer each one with such care and depth.

Q1: When our children look to us for comfort during scary moments, how do we show up for them when we are barely holding it together ourselves?

Dr. Katerina:

This is a moment very familiar to many parents. Following a stressful situation, your child looks up at you with wide eyes, searching your face for information about whether they should be afraid. And inside, you are terrified too.

Children co-regulate before they self-regulate. That means your nervous system serves as their guide. You do not need to always have the answers. You do not need to hold back every tear. What matters most to children is remaining a warm, steady presence, even if that presence is a little shaky around the edges. Providing them with statements of emotional expression coupled with safety is important, for example: "I feel sad about this too, and we are going to be okay together." In this way, you convey uncomfortable emotions in developmentally appropriate language.

I often share with parents: your presence, your honesty, and your willingness to sit with your child in hard moments matters far more than composure. When your child sees that you can feel something difficult and still function, still make dinner, still tuck them in, you are showing them something valuable. You are showing them that hard feelings are survivable. And this serves as the foundation for which they too can manage difficult moments.

Q2: What does it actually look like to build emotional resilience in a young child day to day? Are there simple habits or rhythms that make a real difference?

Dr. Katerina:

Many parents assume resilience is something children either have or they do not. However, it grows gradually, in the quiet repetition of everyday life, long before any crisis arrives.

The foundation of resilience is predictable connection: the same bedtime routine, the same after-school greeting, the same weekly rhythm. These predictable connections do not only serve as habits. They are a child's daily proof that the world is safe and you are reliable.

Here are a few practices that I often advise parents to use at home:

Name feelings out loud, including your own. "I felt frustrated today, so I took some deep breaths" teaches children that feelings have names, feelings are normal, and feelings are survivable.

Teach belly breathing during calm moments. Like the car or bedtime, so it is already familiar when distress arrives. Four counts in, hold four counts, exhale for six counts. Repeat at least three to five times.

Allow for some challenging moments with support. Every time a child works through frustration and comes out the other side, they collect evidence that they can handle hard things. That evidence is resilience.

Repair after rupture. Coming back after you have lost your patience and saying "I am sorry, I was overwhelmed earlier" teaches children how to restore relationships.

Q3: Where is the line between normal childhood shyness or worry, and anxiety that deserves closer attention? How does a parent know when to seek help?

Dr. Katerina:

Every child worries. It is developmentally appropriate, and in measured doses, worry is actually useful and serves an adaptive purpose. It keeps children cautious around strangers and careful crossing the street. Worry is a normal part of childhood. The key question is whether it has started to take over.

Some things to consider. Is the anxiety:

Shrinking their world? For example, avoiding things they used to enjoy, refusing school, declining playdates.

Consuming a lot of time? For example, long rituals before bed, repeated reassurance-seeking that never quite satisfies.

Expressed in physical symptoms? For example, regular stomach aches or headaches with no medical cause, particularly before specific situations.

Producing expressions of fear that seem dramatically larger than the actual situation warrants?

A helpful rule of thumb I share with many parents: worry that passes and does not interfere with a child's life is normal. Worry that persists, is pervasive, and prevents engagement warrants a conversation with your pediatrician or a child mental health professional.

And please, trust your gut. Parents so often know before anyone else that something has shifted. You do not need a perfect checklist to make the call. Something feels off is a valid reason to seek support.

Q4: How do we talk to our children about frightening realities like illness, death, or school safety drills in a way that is honest without being overwhelming?

Dr. Katerina:

When something difficult happens, many parents find themselves unsure of what to say. Most worry that saying too much will frighten their child, while saying too little will leave them alone with something they have already sensed.

Research demonstrates that honesty helps children cope with difficulties. When children discover they were misled, this can lead to mistrust in adults. The goal is to offer truth, with age-appropriate language, followed with what is happening, what is safe, and what you will face together.

A few examples of how to approach this with your child:

On illness: "Grandma is very sick. The doctors are working hard to help her. I am not sure what will happen, but she loves you so much, and we will be together through all of it."

On death: Use clear, simple language. Phrases like "passed away" or "went to sleep" can cause confusion or fear around bedtime. Instead, try: "Grandpa died. His body stopped working and he will not be with us anymore. It is okay to feel sad. We can cry together."

On safety drills: "It is practice, like a fire drill, so everyone knows what to do. Schools do this because they want you to be safe. Your job is to follow your teacher."

Q5: For children facing serious medical challenges, how do parents help them carry the fear and uncertainty alongside the treatment?

Dr. Katerina:

In my work with children who have medical illnesses, most parents are surprised to learn that children are often less afraid of procedures than they are of being kept in the dark. What children fear most is uncertainty.

The instinct to stay relentlessly upbeat is understandable, but research shows that children do better, emotionally and physically, when given honest, age-appropriate information and feel included in what is happening to them.

This starts with diagnosis. Children who know what they are being treated for cope better, ask better questions, and make sense of what their body is going through. When they are not told, they fill the silence with something worse than the truth.

A few strategies that help:

Explain what will happen before it happens. Surprises in medical settings are almost always more distressing than prepared-for realities.

Give control where you can. "Do you want your medicine now or in five minutes?" gives a child something powerful: I still have some say.

Watch for regression. Clinginess and baby talk are normal stress responses. Meet them there without shame.

Many parents ask me what the right words are. The truth is, there are none. Your presence is more powerful than anything you could say.

Q6: What role do screens and digital environments play in children's anxiety today, and is this something you address in your practice?

Dr. Katerina:

Research does show a meaningful association between heavy social media use and anxiety, particularly in adolescent girls. Psychologist Jean Twenge's generational studies found that rates of anxiety and depression among teenagers rose sharply around 2012, closely tracking widespread smartphone adoption. Jonathan Haidt's work has since argued that the shift to phone-based childhood has had significant mental health consequences, especially for girls navigating social comparison and cyberbullying.

For younger children, screen time itself is less the issue than what it replaces. Is it crowding out sleep, movement, and face-to-face play? Those are the things that actually build valuable skills in children such as social skills, problem solving, and a healthy lifestyle.

For adolescents, social media amplifies what teenagers already feel acutely: the need to belong. Social dynamics that once ended at the school door now follow them into their bedrooms at midnight.

Here are some protective tips I share with parents:

Keep devices out of bedrooms at night.

Stay curious about your child's digital life.

Model your own healthy relationship with screens.

Children notice how often you use your screens, for what purpose, and for how long.

Which of Dr. Katerina's answers landed most with you today?

For me it was the first one. The reminder that our children do not need our composure. They need our presence. Even a shaky, imperfect, doing-my-best presence.

I have been thinking about what it means to sit with my three year old in a hard moment without rushing to fix it or smooth it over. To let him see that feelings are survivable by watching me survive mine. That is not something I will get right every time. But it is something I want to keep coming back to, slowly, intentionally, one ordinary moment at a time.

This is the kind of conversation I want to keep having. Not just once in a newsletter, but woven into the way I parent every day. Dr. Katerina's words are not a checklist to complete. They are an invitation to keep reflecting, keep noticing, keep showing up. 🤍

Hit reply and tell me which part of this conversation you are carrying with you. I read every single one.

Dr. Katerina, thank you. For your time, your thoughtfulness, and for answering these questions with such warmth and depth. The parents who submitted these questions did so because they genuinely want to show up better for their children. Your insight gives them the tools to do exactly that. 🤍

And to my lovely readers, if this conversation resonated with you, I would encourage you to explore Dr. Katerina's book The Healing Garden: A Story About Coping with Childhood Cancer. Whether you know a child navigating a medical challenge or simply want a gentle, evidence-based tool for building emotional resilience, this book was written with exactly that purpose in mind.

📖 Available on Amazon: a.co/d/09OhUnrm

Also, if you know a family who could use it, please consider passing it along. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do for someone going through something hard is hand them the right story at the right time.

Until next time,

Aradhana

Creator, Modern Mom Notes

📧 Reply to this email anytime

🌐 modern-mom-notes.beehiiv.com

📱Instagram: modernmon_notes | Facebook: Modern Mom Notes

Not subscribed? Get honest, judgment-free parenting reflections every week: Subscribe for free