news and the listening child

It has been such a busy week, around here. End of the semester, my ever-expanding unwieldy-ness, Acorn's ever-increasing awareness of SO much. Can't hide anything from her. If Mr. S and I say *anything* about a negative event, emotion, etc, she picks up on it, and asks about it.
Example:
Mr. S- It was a stressful day.
Me- What happened?
Him: Some projects were almost complete...
Acorn- What was stressful? What is wrong?
Mr. S- finishes sentence-and I found errors, had to redo everything.
Acorn- What?
Me- It is OK, something went wrong at Daddy's work, but he fixed it.
She has always been super attuned to conflict, emotion, etc. Sometimes it worries me. We don't hide disagreements or discussions from her. However, we just aren't yellers, so our arguments are usually pretty mild. Usually, any discussion about emotion is when we go over something that happened in our day.
All of this runs through my head as I read the horrifying news from Connecticut. I had to wait until her nap to keep reading, I knew I'd get upset, and knew she'd want to know why. I didn't mind telling her about our cat dying, but THIS, I can protect her from.
The fact that a parent did this horrific crime just makes it 1million times more horrifying.