Should you talk to your kids about the child migrants coming to the US?

Salvadorian immigrant Stefany Marjorie, 8, watches as a U.S. Border Patrol agent records family information on July 24, 2014 in Mission, Texas. Like most of the recent surge of Central American immigrant women and children, her family brought documents, often birth certificates, to prove their nationality to U.S. Border officials. Tens of thousands of immigrant families and unaccompanied minors from Central America have crossed illegally into the United States this year and presented themselves to federal agents, causing a humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas' Rio Grande Valley has become the epicenter of the latest immigrant crisis, as more of them enter illegally from Mexico into that sector than any other stretch of the America's 1,933 mile border with Mexico.

Should you talk to your kids about the influx of children migrating to the U.S. from Central America? Christine Ristaino says it's difficult, but necessary.

The influx of migrant children has dominated the airwaves for weeks now. For many adults, the thought of children traveling hundreds of miles on their own only to be detained in freezing cold holding cells is heartbreaking.

Now imagine how scary it is to think about when you are a kid yourself. So how should we be talking about current events with our own families?

Christine Ristaino is a senior lecturer in the Italian Studies Program at Emory University and also a mom. She's been giving this issue a lot of thought, and she joins Take Two to talk about how she broached the subject with her kids.