For Your Children

When I got online this morning at work, my google alerts popped up with news of a shooting in Ohio; specifically, a school shooting. I also heard about it through Twitter via Katy (for some reason WordPress won’t let me hyperlink… http://www.kakakakaty.com/), who lives not far from the school where the shooting happened.

These are the things that make my heart, quite literally, sink and my stomach turn and I’m faced with stark fear and dread. I’m overwhelmed by the choices we make for our children everyday: what we feed them, what we allow them to see on television, what we purchase. We teach them about health and exercise and being a good person, about treating others as you want to be treated. We teach them how to hold our hands when we crossing the street, about looking both ways, about not talking to strangers. We help them memorize phone numbers and addresses; we teach them to be responsible and kind.

Where on that list is the line item that tells us how to teach our kids what do to when a fellow student walks in to the cafeteria and starts firing a gun at people? Where is that? Because I can’t explain it, even to myself, and I sure as hell don’t know how to explain something like that to my five year-old.

And we shouldn’t have to be afraid to send our children to school. But I am.

---