Raising Bright Children in a Scary World

Once again, bloody images of a school shooting fl ashed across national news as parents, families, and friends grieved the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech. No matter how hard we try to protect our children, no place seems safe or exempt from violence. So how do we help our children cope in a capricious, unpredictable, and sometimes very dangerous world? And how do we cope with being a parent in such a scary world?

Sometimes I wish my daughter wasn’t quite so smart. She hears and pays attention to things in the media long before she is emotionally ready to deal with what they mean. I had to stop listening to the news in the car when she was three because she would quiz me endlessly about every news story and why the people did what they did. That was fine… unless the news stories were about rape or murder or war. Then she would worry about the victims, and about whether she was next.

We were living one mile from a local suburban high school when two students walked in with machine guns and opened fi re on the student body. They killed ten students, one teacher, and then themselves. Many more were severely injured, and some were permanently disabled. My daughter was four at the time.

My cousins had attended this high school several years before the tragedy. It was the kind of upper middle class neighborhood where parents move to make sure their children have a good education and are safe from the violence of the inner city. Kids grow up participating in soccer and Little League, and in the summer they all swim at the neighborhood pool together. People know their neighbors and watch each other’s kids grow up. My cousins knew the teacher who was killed—he had been their coach. My aunt was a friend of the school librarian and the principal.

I was at work when I heard the news. Everyone just needed to hold their children close that day. I left early, picked my daughter up at day care, and began the drive home. Traffic is usually bad in big cities, but on this day it was worse than usual. Many of the streets were blocked off, and there was a constant drone of sirens. The drive home was interminable. Of course, she had endless questions about why there were so many police cars and fire trucks.

I tried to shield her from too much news coverage, but it was impossible. It was all anyone ever talked about. A whole community was devastated and struggling to understand. Understand what? No one was even sure what there was to understand. How does something like this happen and no one sees it coming?

The entire youth group from our church was in the school when it happened, and some of them were hospitalized. All of them were traumatized. The parents were in shock for a long time, as was the whole community. I’m glad I wasn’t the minister that Sunday. How do you preach a sermon about such devastation? What can you say that makes any sense?

As the days and weeks went by, counselors and other community members volunteered their time to help the two thousand kids who were in the building that terrible day. Many of them had been hiding anywhere they could find, desperately praying for their lives. Most had lost friends, and some even siblings. I felt guilty about not helping, but I had a four-year-old to think about.

She had lots of questions. Most of them hurt to answer, partly because there was a keen awareness for every parent in the community that it could have been their child who had died.

We’d see a police car and she’d ask, “Mommy, is that policeman going to shoot me?”

“No, honey,” I’d answer. “The policemen are there to help us and keep us safe.” But I had doubts about whether I really believed what I was saying. Certainly, no one had been able to keep these kids safe.

One day, she said, “Mommy, if those bad guys come to my day care, I’m going to hide under the table and tell all my friends to hide, too.” I felt as if I’d been stabbed by a knife, but I had to answer calmly.

I tried to reassure her. “Well, honey, if they came to your day care, they couldn’t get in. Remember, it’s locked.”

“But what if they had a key?”

“They couldn’t get a key. No one would give them one.”

“But what if they broke the window and got in?”

“Well, then, the staff would call the police and they would come and protect you.”

“What if they didn’t get there soon enough?”

The questions went on and on. Finally, with no other way to reassure her, I said, “Honey, those bad guys can’t come to your day care because they are dead, too.”

She looked puzzled. “So how did they die?”

“Am I really going to have to explain suicide to a four year old?” I thought.

I took a deep breath, and said, “Well, they shot themselves.”

Now she looked even more puzzled. “But why would they do that?”

“Because they were sick in the head,” I explained. “The important part is that you are safe.” That seemed to satisfy her for the moment, but it felt like a hollow promise.

The trouble is, I can’t really promise that she will be safe. Events such as this have shattered any illusions we might have held that the world is a safe and predictable place. Every day, we have devastating hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis. Even worse, we live in a world where people fl y airplanes into high-rise buildings, trying to kill as many people as they can, or blow up a building knowing that there is a day care center in the basement. Yet in spite of our anxieties, we have to fi nd ways to cope and to help our children flourish.

How We Cope (or Don’t!) as Adults

Following a traumatic event, a large percentage of adults will experience what mental health professionals call “Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD). This is essentially a normal reaction to an abnormal event in which the person is physically harmed, perceives that he or she may be harmed, or witnesses someone else being harmed. Examples of events that can trigger this include natural disasters, life-threatening car accidents, being a victim of a violent crime or witnessing it, war, rape, domestic violence, and childhood physical or sexual abuse. It is a very common problem, with the American Psychological Association estimating about 3.6% of adults ages 18-54 experiencing enough symptoms to be diagnosed with PTSD in any given year. Symptoms of PTSD can show up even months or years later, and typically include some of the following: