I hope very few have experienced this but I am from Highland Park, Illinois and the recent tragedy has really shaken my kids even though they no longer live here. We went to that parade every year for 15 or more years. They spent countless hours in the little downtown and seeing the quiet downtown with its little lcandy store and the pancake house on the news surrounded by police and the FBI is surreal.
Many of my friends are also reporting that their kids ( who don’t live here) are even more freaked out than their parents. Has anyone else experienced this ( again I hope not) But if so how did your kids handle it? What were you able to say to them to help them process things.
We live very near to one of the other recent tragedies. We have family that live in the community it happened in. One of the fatalities was the grandmother of my sons good friend.
I think the reality and fear will surface more in a few weeks. I will respect my kid’s opinions and potential fears about walking in any parades.
Traditionally the high school band marched in our local parade. One of our band teachers lives in the community where the tragedy happened. His own kids attend the schools there. As of right now the plan is for the band to march. If my kids dont feel safe, I will let them take the “F” for the day.
The high school My husband went to had a school shooting 2 years ago. It felt a little too close to home for my kids, literally their grandparents neighborhood. I don’t think we’re safe anywhere anymore. I definitely think about it as a teacher and a mother.
So sad we’ve come to the point that people are afraid to participate in or even attend parades. It’s just very very sad. I remember walking/marching with the Girl Scouts in many Christmas parades. None of ever imagined any violence—biggest question was what to eat/drink at the end of the parade.
We’ve been spared personal connections, thankfully. But, a friend of ours–teaching colleague of H’s–attended Parkland. She doesn’t live in FL anymore, but has been very very affected by that tragedy.
How sad is it that so many on this thread have experienced these horrors so close to home? I live not far from Newtown. The funeral procession of one of the slain teachers went through my town. It was heartbreaking.
I’m literally sick of these tragedies. NONE of them had to happen. There is no reason whatsoever that guns should be so easily accessible to almost anyone. It’s not just mental health. And yet, nothing changes. We all just have to sit around, hoping it doesn’t hit our town next.
My friend’s son is a student at a high school that had a mass shooting, and one of his best friends died. My friend’s son has a really great group of friends who are supporting each other, and all are getting therapy. It’s still extremely difficult for them. I have seen reports of other kids who do not have a large, supportive friend network, and those kids seem to struggle a bit more. But perhaps the ones who don’t seem to struggle as much actually ARE struggling as much. To be honest, how on earth can a young person who was in that school, near that school, or related to someone at that school be okay after what happened? It makes me ill to think about what happened … so it has to be incredibly difficult for a young person to process.
My kids grew up in a small town where two kids in their grades took their own lives within a short time span. Kids are all close and have known each other since Pre-K so this hit hard.
My kids have also been affected by all the craziness of the last 5 years. The world is a more violent and crazier place than I remember. It’s not a shooting but it does lend itself to thinking that anything can happen and your world will be upside down/loss of control. When I was growing up we didn’t have a lot of what the news cycle now covers daily.
No violence in the schools my kids went to but kids are very wary for lots of reasons I’d never thought of at that age.
I worry more about random violence than ever. Though I grew up in a very low income SES where there was a lot of crime, and I now live in a high income SES with almost zero crime. Even in the “bubble”, the likelihood of violence seems closer than it used to. I haven’t watched the news in about 3 years. I do read newspapers online to keep up, I just don’t want to hear it delivered in outbursts.
We’ve been near two mass shootings plus D has lived through school bomb threats, lock downs due to weapons being found, and a teammate’s unintentional death following a drug over dose.
Definitely difficult to deal with as parents when kids learn sooner than we’d like that the world isn’t a safe place. Thank goodness for school psychologists and safe places for students to go to process events.
Re: Challenger, I don’t think many kids/young adults today can understand the importance of that mission at that time. That mission, with Christa McAuliffe, was a big deal. I think if one of Elon Musk’s spaceships blew up in orbit with a famous person in their circle, they would be more affected. As for me, I watched it live on the couch from my den. It was a teacher workday. It was awful.
Re: tragedies in my kids’ hometowns/schools. We haven’t had any shootings at school, but my kids have seen plenty of tragedy. Just the other week multiple (5-10) kids were shot and 1 died at a party at the house of a soccer teammate. (Mine weren’t there.) Another soccer teammate’s mom was shot/killed by her boyfriend (murder-suicide), leaving him to care for his 1 year old step-brother. Another classmate was killed by gang violence. A couple of friends/teammates died from suicide. And recently, one of my S’ told me that the kid he played basketball with during HS gym class is in prison for kidnapping! Another had a knife fight break out next to him during lunch - I guess that was at school. Weapons/drugs/etc being found at school wasn’t anything unusual, but thankfully none of the horrific school shootings!
I think they’ve learned that nothing in life is guaranteed. You can plan all you want to, and it’s good to try to be safe, but the world just isn’t safe. It never has, and it never will be. That being said, mass gun violence by youths seems to be a more recent phenomena, and I wish we could find a way to break the pattern.
I don’t really have an answer, but think it’s an important topic as it has changed the trajectory of DD22’s life.
My daughter was in school in MA as the Parkland shooting was unfolding. Due to social media , she was basically watching it in real time. This was the first time the information wasn’t filtered and she has never been the same. The following day they had a school assembly and she had her first panic attack. She literally doesn’t even remember being there. She became so distracted by any noise outside of her classroom that she was unable to concentrate. She ended up dropping all of her honors classes (which resulted in a change of friend group as well). She was late to classes because there were certain stairways she wouldn’t use (there is a large open stairway in the front of the building that leads into a large open area with 2 story glass windows) because she felt like a sitting duck. She stopped going to school early to socialize as the kids needed to be in the large, glass atrium so she would get there as the bell was ringing and just run to class. She stopped playing a sport as she didn’t want to spend any more time in school than she had to. At the start of each year she would make sure she was still small enough to fit in a locker to hide if she had to (she still weighs less than 95 lbs). She absolutely hated being in school. My once fearless girl became a homebody. No, she does not suffer from generalized anxiety. All of her anxiety is around this one specific issue. Yes, we’ve done counseling and there have been improvements, but I HATE that this is what kids have to deal with today.
It’s really hard to equate the tragedies of our youth with the gun violence we see today. We can’t tell them that it was a 1 in a million (like 9/11, airplane crashes, Oklahoma bombing, etc) as it happens EVERY DAMN DAY. I remember that I couldn’t even function for a week after Newton as my kids were the same age. Now, even I have become desensitized as it happens so often that I just move on. It’s like we’ve come to accept this as the price we pay for “freedom”. It’s insane.
On another note that may be helpful to people with kids still currently in school:
Seriously think of “excusing” your kid from active shooter training. We had it written into a 504 for my daughter (and the principal at the time gave us a hard time. Notice I said at the time as this is one of the reasons he is no longer there). Active shooter training is very traumatizing for many students and while you may think your kid will do just fine, I’ve known many who thought they would be and weren’t. Having your friend freeze during training and then realizing you would be in a position to either die trying to save them or have to leave them for dead is not a scenario any child should have to “practice”.
That is a good note about active school shooter training. We had an active shooter training day at work. It involved us practicing several times with different methods of running, finding a place to hide, ways to fight back, etc. while a person walked around with a fake, but very real sounding gun shooting at us. (I work in a public building, and the public was notified beforehand!) While I appreciated the training, I was pretty wigged out for the rest of the day. I am a very jumpy person by nature. I know some other people were affected as well. And they said we got the “intermediate version.”
And I will note that while I thought the presentation/training was very well done, I wish they hadn’t shown video of the VA Tech shootings. That is my alma mater. It took place in my major’s building. I was in all of those classrooms, and I did lose one of my professors. But even worse, a couple of my colleagues were there that day. I guess they didn’t realize that.
I’m very conflicted about active shooter training. I teach junior high/high school. The one surviving teacher from Uvalde said what they taught the kids to do actually made them sitting ducks for the shooter. I want to make sure what I’m directing my students to do will actually help to save their lives. I’m also aware of the fact that if we had a school shooter at our school, they would likely be someone who had also gone through active shooter training as a student, at our school or elsewhere.
My D’s active shooter training in HS was very intense. They had police pretend to “fake” shooters and depending on where the students were in the building dictated if they fled, barricaded, or stayed to fight. D’s classroom was one that fled but others were instructed to throw books, chairs, desks, and whatever they could. I would be totally freaked out just dot do the drill.
Great point. I told my kids when they were in K-4 if anything happens run like hell don’t stay for any reason. There were doors in every class. Nothing ever happened but there was a lockdown once ( for a raccoon that got into the building).
I don’t believe in being a sitting duck. And my kids know if anything bad ever happens to move as far and as fast away from the area as possible.
My kids have never had active shooter training. I wouldn’t allow that. Mental health is very important to protect IMO. I think that would make my kids very nervous about something that has a low chance of occurring. If I thought it was useful, I’d comply. But I don’t. (
I am taking my oldest for self defense training before college send off.
I don’t know that we can say anymore that there’s a low chance of a school shooting happening. We now live in a country where gun violence is the leading cause of death for children.
Not at my D’s school, but involved with a shooting I think 7 people, many who were of HS age got shot at a house less than a mile away. The suspected shooters last known address was where myself and my HS daughter were living. It was a small home in the woods, and we had no window blinds. The night of the shooting, I woke to lights shining in my room. I hit the floor and crawled to my daughters bedroom and put us in the only interior hallway. Was told it was SWAT, and I eventually opened the door. Daughter has never brought it up since, but I remember every detail. This was I think 2007.
Edit, I just went back through the newspaper reports, 3 were killed, 4 others shot and injured. We weren’t at the shooting, but we’re involved in the aftermath. Had the GBI sitting at the top of my driveway till he was caught.