We are officially back to school. Every parent across the country has already bought the new school clothes and supplies, we’ve already been to back to school night and meet all the new teachers. But this new generation of how school operates is still shockingly new to most mommies and daddies.
I have not yet recovered from a couple of emails I recently received from the administrative staff at my son’s elementary school. One was regarding a suspicious man circulating the school while asking a couple of students to come over to his car. The second email was to inform parents that the students participated in an “emergency drill.” Those are the drills to teach young children how to hide from dangerous activity taking place in the school. Like I said, I still haven’t really recovered from those notifications coming through back to back, although the school staff was doing the responsible thing to inform us parents. But it’s just mind blowing that the “stranger danger” teachings that became popular in the 80’s, is now coupled with “this is how to run and be safe when someone enters the school with a gun” teaching.
As an Autism mom I have the additional fear of a classroom full of students who literally would not be able to properly be quiet if one of these God forbidden moments were to take place in real life. Autism kids are known to be loud, to yell randomly, and would have a hard time sitting still in a restricted and dark space without an extreme response.
I remember having tornado drills in school, they were common growing up in Colorado. Other parts of the country practiced earthquake drills, and hurricane drills, but a school shooting drill??? I still can’t wrap my brain around it. School districts across the country now have drills to teach our children how to protect themselves in the case of an emergency. As we know, in many schools these moments are not hypothetical, but became a nightmare of reality. As was experienced by the Parkland High School father who created this sculpture shown. He captures the heart of innocence being robbed as a child hides for cover, during a school shooting.
I pray over my child daily, that’s where I find my peace. I trust his teachers would do everything they could to protect him and the other children in his class. To everyone reading this, I pray protection over your children too. May emergency response drills one day be a thing of the past, because school shootings have also become a thing of the past.
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