Yesterday, on the 24th anniversary of 9/11 and the day after a mass school shooting an hour away from where I live, my son’s middle school, along with a neighboring high school, middle school, and several elementary schools, went on lockdown for almost an hour and a half due to a report made to police of someone with a weapon near the school. Long story short, police located the person and determined that the individual was jogging with a weighted vest and was holding their cell phone in their hands, not a gun or taser. The most important thing about this story is that everyone was safe and our kids got to go home to their families.
But, holy wow, was it an incredibly stressful couple of hours.
There are no words for what it felt like to open up my email, text, and listen to a voicemail from the school district informing me that my son’s school was in Lockdown. At first, I thought it was all part of safety drill as a lockdown drill had been scheduled for next week. “Maybe they got the date wrong in the first email, this can’t be real, right?” Yeah, no, it was real.
A school friend asked if I have any tips for parents and school staff on how best to respond emotionally to our kids’ needs in the aftermath of such a dramatic and traumatic day. So, here’s what I came up with. I hope noone who reads this ever has to make use of the information in this post but if you do, I hope it’s helpful and I wish you peace.
It’s deeply upsetting that school shootings and mass public violence have become as commonplace as they are in the United States, so much so that you can find a ton of resources on the internet already that address how to support our children. For example, https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-safety-and-crisis/school-violence-resources/talking-to-children-about-violence-tips-for-families-and-educators
But I’ll add in a few of my own thoughts in hopes they might be helpful:
Firstly, reestablish an environment of safety for your child - emotional, mental, physical, and social - in whatever way that looks for your child and your family. For some kids, that may mean hanging out with friends as they mgiht normally do, for others it might mean pancakes for dinner and a whole family living room sleepover watching a movie. Generally, children take their environmental safety mostly for granted. In the event of a lockdown or school shooting, that confidence is painfully challenged. So take some time helping them to recover their sense of security and safety. People always say, "kids are resilient." And that's true, but it doesn't mean they don't need some extra support.
By the way, this doesn't mean we gaslight our kids by telling them there's no reason to be worried. We can be age-appropriately realistic while also emphasizing the steps those in positions of authority have taken to make them as safe as possible.
Second, have a conversation with them, maybe several conversations. This will reassure them that they can talk to you if they want or need to. They may not have much to say right now and that's okay. It happens all the time that kids will start talking about things out of the blue days, weeks, or even months later. Your openness and readiness to talk about hard things in a calm, supportive manner today may enable them to open up later. With my kids, I've found the easiest places to have open and deceptively casual conversations are in the car and right before bed.
In that conversation, I would model your own vulnerability in talking about the stress of being a parent during the chaos of the day. You're normalizing for them that it's okay to have feelings. You have to ride that line of demonstrating that having emotions and expressing them is totally valid and even realistic while not going so far that you're shaking their sense of confidence in you as a source of emotional safety. Remember, you are their strength, they shouldn't have to be yours.
There are a lot of things that happen during a lockdown that can be scary, from the blaring of "lockdown, lockdown, security breach, locks, lights, out of sight" repeatedly for as long as you’re in a lockdown, seeing police come through classrooms with, in my son's words, "a huge rifle with a flashlight stuck to it!", seeing classmates' fears, teachers preparing for the worst, and even dealing with the boredom and monotony of staying silent in cramped offices for what felt like forever.
Tell your kids that it's totally normal they may not have much of a reaction now but might later. Or maybe their friends are more upset than they are right now. Encourage them to be open to their own inner experience and supportive and compassionate of others' feelings. There's no one right way to deal with trauma.
One of the best mitigating factors that can prevent an experience of trauma becoming traumatizing is if you don't feel so alone in it all. So maybe consider being a bit more intentional than usual in the next few days and weeks in building moments of connection for and with your kids.
I should also note that you'll want to be a bit more alert for signs of increased anxiety or trauma. This can include physical symptoms like stomach aches and headaches and/or increased irritability, anger and safety seeking behaviors. This link has a more comprehensive list of symptoms to be on the lookout for: https://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/resources//parents_guidelines_for_helping_youth_after_the_recent_shooting.pdf. If you're noticing some things that are making you concerned, don't hesitate to get some more support. There are a ton of great therapists, you don't have to do this alone.
On that note, we parents have our own experience of trauma when our children’s health and wellbeing are endangered. As much as we know school shootings can happen, it's a completely different experience to personally go through something that feels actively threatening to those we love. Acknowledge and validate your own feelings and seek support in your community if you need whether via therapy, social connections, or even engaging in advocacy. Actually, one way that can be helpful in processing trauma for both kids and adults is trying to make some kind of meaning out of it all. Figuring out a way to turn something terrible into something productive and empowering can counter the awful feelings of helplessness experienced regardless if it's a micro or macro action.
Last thing I'll say in this mostly stream of consciousness essay - I am personally so grateful to our teachers, school staff, and administration.
Our teachers are forced to play the impossible role of counselor, behavior monitor, and even hero/ine. They are our kids' last line of defense in these nightmare scenarios. It's incredibly unjust to the entire school community but such is the world we live in. To all our teachers who prepared themselves to fight for their students' safety, thank you for your service, your bravery in the face of terror, and your heart. I'll share that one way I plan on processing the day's events with my son is to write a thank you note to his 4th period teacher.
If you have any questions about any of the above, feel free to reach out. You’re not alone.
Wishing you all peace,
Cindy (a parent first, therapist second)