Yesterday, just moments after Kate boarded her bus to school, I received a call from her superintendent informing me a threat had been made against the school. Steps were made to insure the school was safe and law enforcement was on the scene further assuring the safety of all students. We are a part of a large corporation and I know without question, if there was any concern whatsoever the threat was real, school would have been cancelled. The call was simply a courtesy. My initial knee-jerk reaction was to get in the car and follow the bus to school to get my kid. Fortunately, I have been hard at work these last two years on a life mantra called "respond not react". I am two years into the journey and have a long way to go but knew I needed to reign in my overly emotional reaction to life. I am by no stretch of the imagination to a place where I don't still have reactionary thoughts first.
I no sooner hung up the phone from the automated call before I received a text from Kate on the bus. Other parents were calling their kids. They were following the bus and retrieving their children and Kate was scared. Of course she was. As gut wrenching as it was, I had to explain to her that day would be the safest day of the year for her because it would be flooded with law enforcement (and it was), all staff would be on high alert (and they were) and sadly, real threats aren't warned about ahead of time. It broke my heart to have that exchange via text message when she was pleading to be picked up.
As the day progressed, 500 of her classmates were picked up from school. Parents were understandably frightened. I was too because this event just affirmed what we already know. The world is not always a safe place and bad things do happen. Kate expressed the teachers weren't following lesson plans with such low attendance so she wasn't learning anything and again begged to go home. Her friends weren't there to help process all she was feeling so I suggested she sketch or talk with a teacher she is particularly close to about her thoughts. She was irritated but I firmly believe the lesson she was learning wasn't on any one's lesson plans that day. We will constantly face a life full of scary things. We have a decision to make. Will that fear prevent us from living fully or will we rise above? I have faith Kate came out of this situation stronger for it.
By lunch, the young woman responsible for the threat was arrested. Kate knew her well in third grade but wasn't surprised to learn who it was so in addition to unpacking all she learned that day, she then needed to process how a young girl could make such an error in judgment. She was pretty critical until I shared some of the things I have learned both from my own adolescent years and from wearing out the tread on my parenting of teens' shoes. Kids are kids. Their brains simply aren't yet capable of processing the impact their decisions have on others. As devastated as her parents are, she likely cannot see what pain she has caused. Nor does she understand the full impact her actions had on an entire community.
Kate and I talked through all the ways parents are ill prepared to keep up with all that threatens the safety and well being of their children and how we have to rely on our faith to keep us sane(ish) throughout this parenting season. She now understands a little more about how we like to point fingers and place blame in tragic moments because it somehow sends our hearts the message that a specific horrible thing can't happen to us. Here's the deal. It most certainly can. So I can take my kids' phones and read their messages and I can monitor their social media accounts but I cannot prevent them from having secret accounts nor can I prevent them from spending time with kids a little more bent on getting into trouble. What I can do is prioritize time spent listening to them, engaging in deeper conversations and allowing them to experience uncomfortable situations to later discuss how she felt in the moment and how it feels to be in a place of reflection.
I do not know the family of the child responsible but I am heartbroken for them. No parent thinks this could happen to them and 95% of us are just doing the best we know to do for our children so I pray our community will withhold judgment and condemnation. Because even minor infractions of our children that become public can make most of us feel like we have failed.
No comments:
Post a Comment