Michelle Obama sees lessons after Arizona shooting

(Reuters) - First lady Michelle Obama urged parents across the United States on Thursday to talk to their children about the Arizona shootings and use the event to teach them a lesson about American values.

Mrs. Obama joined her husband, President Barack Obama, at a memorial service in Tucson on Wednesday for the victims of Saturday's attack outside a supermarket, where a gunman killed six people and critically wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Obama said children would struggle with questions about what such an event says about the world.

"The questions my daughters have asked are the same ones that many of your children will have - and they don't lend themselves to easy answers," the first lady wrote in an "open letter" to parents on the White House website.

"But they will provide an opportunity for us as parents to teach some valuable lessons - about the character of our country, about the values we hold dear, and about finding hope at a time when it seems far away," she wrote.

Echoing themes that her husband touched upon in his speech at the memorial service on Wednesday, Mrs. Obama said parents could teach their children to be opened minded even with people whose opinions they don't share.

"We can teach them the value of tolerance - the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us," she wrote. "We can teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they disagree."

The Obamas have two children. The first lady has made fighting child obesity one of her signature causes since coming to the White House.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason. Editing by Peter Bohan)