After Their School Bus Didn’t Drop Them Off, This Mom Feared the Worst. Then She Saw a Facebook Post About Her Kids
Mom Prudence Hill’s three children were late getting back home from elementary school that day. At first, Prudence didn’t think much of it. After all, bus delays weren’t out of the ordinary for them.
But then, she went on Facebook. And a mother’s worst nightmare came true. Their school was on lockdown–after two youths were spotted nearby with a rifle and a scope.
In an article for LiftBump, Prudence wrote, “I was frantic for news. The school sent messages and posted updates on social media, advising us not to try to come pick up our children.”
This went on for an agonizing two hours.
Finally, a young man was found with a rifle-style pellet gun and replica firearms, and was arrested for disorderly conduct. The students were sent home on buses, with a police escort.
Prudence breathed a sigh of relief–until she saw what the experience did to her children.
She wrote, “It was my youngest who was most visibly disturbed by the experience. Only in first grade, she was still frightened at seeing her teacher grab a baseball bat and send the kids under the desks, each with a heavy book to hold in front of themselves.”
Her older children, in the fourth and fifth grade, were shaken as well.
She had to spend days assuring her angels that they were truly safe. And it made her think about something shocking.
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She wrote, “I began to wonder whether we were teaching them to be afraid so that we adults could feel better.”
As she pointed out, the percentage of youth homicides occurring at school has stayed at less than 3 percent of all youth homicides. But despite it being statistically unlikely, there has been a huge wave of lockdown drills throughout many schools in the U.S.
Prudence has noticed many adults feel like these drills destroy the kids’ innocence, but she personally thinks that blame lies on adults for forcing schools to adopt the drills.
“We may have the comfort of feeling that we’ve ‘done something’ about a statistically unlikely event, but the price we’ve paid is our children’s fear,” she wrote.
What do YOU think about this mom’s take?
via LiftBump
