One mother said, “I’m sick of holding my breath.”
Following a mass shooting at Georgia High School, a similar trend of dread set in parents all over the country as they prepare for another school day.
On a faithful Thursday morning, a mother from Florida texted her 15-year-old ‘I love you’ after he and his brother rode their bikes to school. A Georgia mom emailed the principal of her fourth-grader because it would make her feel better. A gun control advocate and a mother of a 12-year-old girl informed her daughter about the murder of two students and two teachers, who’d been shot at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, and she broke into tears.
The brutal reality of parenting in the United States is shown by their 24-hour experiences from coast to coast as school shootings continue to strike campuses where families entrust their most vulnerable loved ones. Each time a fresh tragedy strikes the nation, parents deal with renewed anxiety about sending their children to a school environment where many can’t guarantee their safety. Every parent has a different approach on how to deal with the feeling of fear, anxiety, and haplessness.
Crystal Garrant, the gun control advocate and a mother of a fourth grader in Atlanta, said, “The best thing I can do is manage my own emotions.”
Garrant’s increased anxiety, and that of many parents this week, is supported by data. According to most recent reports from the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety and David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, school shooting is up by 31% across the nation.
The frequency of gun violence in American schools has changed the way their students’ campuses look and feel. Drills for active shooters are part of the back-to-school program. School security has increased in recent years. According to surveys, most teachers worry about the shooting, and some educators carry firearms with them.
According to Dr Janine Domingues, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York, it’s “perfectly valid” that parents feel sad or anxious in the wake of the school shooting. However, Dominguess stated that parents must take time to control their emotions about events before talking to their children about them.
She stated, “As not just a psychologist but as a parent, I totally understand the anxiety around hearing about these things.” “It also is sad that we keep on having to have conversations, and it’s something that we need to talk about.”
