I recall December 14, 2012, like it was yesterday, hearing the news near how Adam Lanza entered Sandy Claw Uncomplicated Schoolhouse and murdered 20 school children and vi staff members. That was after he shot and killed his mother, but before he shot and killed himself. That day, equally I collection to option upwards my children, and so in 6th, quaternary and 2nd grades, I couldn't stop crying equally I listened to the news on the radio, each emerging item worse than the 1 earlier it.

I sat in the carline, and I call up thinking that my husband and I needed to tell the kids what happened, to explain this horrific effect to their young and impressionable minds before they heard information technology anywhere else. So that evening, we told them what had happened in Newtown, CT, earlier that mean solar day. We were discreet merely honest, trying to be truthful but non terrifying. For a moment, it was like crickets chirping. And then came the flood of questions and comments, each one valid but heartbreaking. One of my kids struggled more than than the others, sensitive past nature and very much a "feelings-driven" child. He couldn't fall asleep on his own that night, and so we immune him to climb into our bed for condolement. And the remaining days before Christmas break were challenging as he was afraid to be autonomously from us, agape of what could happen to him at school.

school shootings

My friend, who's a middle school teacher, had a student leave this annotation on her desk terminal week.

My boys are now in 11th, ninth and seventh grades, and all three are what I consider to be well-adapted, average, run-of-the-mill kids. They have phones and friends, and the older ii fiddle in social media, though not obsessively. They are growing upward and appropriately detaching from their parents, a procedure I'm told is normal … a sign that they're preparing for life outside of the nest. Equally such, when the Parkland school shooting happened on Valentine'due south Day, my married man and I weren't the ones sharing what had happened with them. My kids learned virtually the effect — and all of the available details — on their own, by fashion of social media and news and friends. They saw the videos that the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took while they were on lock down inside the schoolhouse, chilling proof of just how terrifying it all was, though surely not doing justice to the in-person experience. They learned how the shooter pulled the burn alarm to get the students to come out of their classrooms before he opened burn, and how the students called and texted their families to let them know they loved them, simply in case.

That night, I was glued to the news, and I cried as I watched the students and parents talk to the news people, trying to explain what happened, trying to brand sense of and process all of the madness. My son — the aforementioned one who struggled with Sandy Claw — came downstairs and sat down next to me on the couch, closer than normal, and he silently watched as well. I asked him a couple of open up-ended questions in hopes he would share his thoughts and feelings and then we could hash out them. Thankfully, he did open, and as the tears rolled down his face, he captured everything — every single emotion I imagine many American school-age kids feel — in ane elementary statement: "Information technology'southward just kind of hard to go to school when you're thinking this could be the last mean solar day I'k alive."

What do you say to that? What Tin can you say?!

I have a good friend who teaches middle school, and she brings an insider's perspective to the topic that frankly I detect terrifying.

She says that despite preparation and drills, she nevertheless feels like she and her students are sitting ducks should an armed assailant make his mode into their schoolhouse. "In these horrific situations, information technology is but LUCK that allows folks to walk away," she posted on her Facebook folio soon subsequently the Parkland shootings. "LUCK that y'all weren't in the entryway. LUCK that you weren't in Room 27. LUCK that you accept a classroom closet that volition hold 18 kids. LUCK that you or your child had the influenza and were home for the day. LUCK that your gym instructor steps in front end of the spray of bullets and literally takes ane for the squad. America wonders why our kids are anxious and depressed?"

And that they are. Our kids ARE broken-hearted. MY kids are anxious. And still, they bravely get up and get to schoolhouse everyday, putting on their game faces, which boldly hibernate the fear and wisdom that far surpass their years.

*****

I was at work yesterday, and my phone rang. It was my son calling. Odd for the eye of a schoolhouse twenty-four hour period, I idea. I answered thinking he was going to ask me to deliver an assignment he'd left at dwelling house or ask if he could hang out with friends after school. Instead, he informed me that the schoolhouse burn warning had gone off, and that he, along with the remainder of the students, were filing out of the school for what he hoped was a fire drill.

"Okay," I said, clearly perplexed.

"I just wanted to tell y'all," he said, picking up on my confusion. "Just in case."

Ashley Haugen is a married mother of iv children — three boys and a girl — who loves her family unit like crazy.

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