QUESTION: With school violence becoming
an all-too-regular part of the nightly news, my 11 year old is afraid
to go to school -- and I am scared to send her. I do not know what
to say to help her deal with this senseless violence. How can I help
her deal with her fears?
ANSWER: It is natural for your daughter
to want to stay home with you at a time when her sense of safety has
been shattered. Children can experience post traumatic stress from
identification with the students who endured the violence. And you,
too, experience empathy and shock for the parents whose children are
direct victims.
Staying physically close to you may be your daughter's
way of coping. Your presence alone is immediately soothing, and can
help her to recover her sense of security. Use the following guidelines
and discussion to help you and your daughter find the path towards
recovery.
Expression is the first step toward recovery. Establish
a safe environment for talking about feelings. Show your willingness
to talk with your child about her feelings, but do not force her to
talk. She will express herself when she is ready. Let her know you,
too, are stunned and saddened. Answer her questions honestly, but
do not try to explain anything you cannot understand yourself. Refrain
from giving false promises, "This can never happen to you," but do
convey a sense that you believe this tragedy will cause people everywhere
to actively search for needed answers.
The second step in the recovery process includes being
able to address or actively respond to the traumatic event. Being
witness to a crime is traumatic because the witness was helpless to
stop the crime. In a true sense, we are all witnesses to this tragedy,
and as such need to actively respond to heal. Let her know you are
deeply concerned, and will be talking with other parents and teachers
about safety at her school.
Make time to consult with teachers, administrators
and other parents about addressing school violence. Teachers are well
aware that students use poetry and writing assignments to work through
traumatic life processes. Art, drama and music projects, as well as
community gardens, have been utilized to recover from crisis. Telling
your story (feelings, perceptions) to peers and teachers who are also
working through this trauma is deeply therapeutic for both you and
your child.
Connecting with others allows us to express the shock,
pain and grief rather than repress it. Children who do repress fear
or grief initially, may experience delayed stress symptoms later.
A pattern of sleeplessness, anxiety, nightmares, or even depression
may result if overwhelming feelings have no opportunity to be released.
Encourage your child's physical, creative and artistic avenues of
expression at this time.
Signs of stress can include regressions to earlier
behavioral patterns, such as clinging to your side, or the reverse,
retreating from contact, depending on the child. Encourage your child
to maintain a routine schedule, but remain connected and interested
in talking about what is being discussed in the classroom. Encourage
these discussions and stay in touch with your child's school experience.
Expect your child to respond to news of school violence
in his or her own way. Younger children will be more focused on safety
alone. Older children in junior high and high school may come home
debating interpretations of nonconformity and individualism. Girls
may reach out more, while boys may tend towards keeping more of their
feelings inside. While we adults will need to grapple with the absence
of government programs that provide schools with the therapeutic educational
and family support services required to address the violence happening
in our schools. Our schools are, after all, a microcosm of our society.
Although I have repeated this advice in my column,
many times, it bears saying again. Research on child development and
prevention of criminal behavior point to a child's need for one caring
adult to consistently believe in, and be committed to, their best
interests. All children need a mentor. This adult can be a parent,
an aunt, an uncle, a grandfather, or a teacher. There is no one family
constellation that guarantees that a child will experience a quality,
caring relationship with an adult. And single parents can and do provide
such quality at the same rate as two parent families.
Children fall through the cracks because there is
no one committed to their well-being, in a society that is getting
increasingly difficult to navigate. The boys who perpetrated the tragedy
at Columbine High were nearing the end of their high school careers.
Was anyone helping them make plans for their future? Leaving high
school for the adult world can be an overwhelming transition, when
the future looks bleak and hopeless.
We need to provide the support necessary to children
and families in trouble. And parents should feel there is somewhere
to turn for help and resources when their own efforts to reach a disenfranchised
teen are not enough. If it takes a village to raise a child, this
tragedy as well as other school tragedies, tells us there is a gross
miscarriage of caretaking by our society.
