We’ve all had times when we wanted to slap the daylights out of somebody. But because we live in a civilized society, we know this is not an acceptable way to release anger. Which is why Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars was such a shock that people were still talking about it days later.

Whether or not you think Smith’s action was justified, probably most parents who saw it immediately recoiled with the thought, “What kind of message does this send to our kids?”

So how can we use the Oscars incident as a teaching moment for them?

Sort through your feelings

While violence has been a part of humans’ history for as long as there have been humans, it seems to have exploded in the last few years. Just a quick glance at the news will show we seem to have more and more trouble controlling our tempers. And if we can’t behave, how can we expect our kids to?

“You want to be able to say to little ones that violence isn’t the answer and that we use our words to resolve things and yet we live in a complicated society where we’re in the middle of a war,” Kira Banks, associate professor in the department of psychology at St. Louis University and cofounder of the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity, told CNN.

So you first have to be aware of how you handle your own anger in front of your children.

Questions, not a lecture

Wendy Rice, a psychologist based in Tampa, told CNN that parents should avoid lecturing and help kids reach their own conclusions.

She suggests asking questions to help them make sense of what happened:

• What were you thinking when you saw that happen?
• Could you understand why Will Smith was upset?
• How do you think Jada Pinkett Smith was feeling?
• Did he have other options to defend his wife?
• How do you think Chris Rock was feeling after he was slapped?
• What do you think of how he reacted?

Bring it home

Then relate the incident to their own lives, by asking how they’d defend a friend whose feelings were hurt by someone else.

Ask how they’d want you to defend them if someone hurts their feelings.

“What we really want to do is create thinking kids,” Rice said. “How do you make it a learnable moment that kids can hear instead of parents saying, ‘No, don’t do that.’ ”