Another brutal school shooting in the news today, this time in an Amish community in Pennsylvania. Like last week’s high school shooting in Colorado, the perpetrator singled out girls, allegedly shooting them execution-style before killing himself. As I write this, at least three girls are confirmed dead…the youngest, just six years old.
How can you ever prepare your child to deal with something like this?
Just this morning, I was talking to a co-worker about today’s “overprotective” parents. We wait with our kids at the bus stop and give them cell phones before they go to the park…that is, if we ever let them out of our sight. Some parents even send their 7-year-olds to self-defense class to teach them what to do should they be approached by shady characters.
Very different from when we were young and there were no cell phones and we’d disappear in the woods for hours at a time after school.
Some things are just out of parent’s hands. And no self-defense class would have helped the girls today. As an overprotective parent myself, that’s a hard thing to come to terms with.
News Mom V.
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4 comments:
I used to take issue with the news business (sorry ladies) - not for covering these coverage-deserving stories - but for awarding so much coverage and ignoring many of the routine dangers our kids face. Now, though, it seems to be happening so much... What's your perspective - is the intense media coverage of the relatively unusual scaring us unnecessarily or are school shootings becoming a routine danger?
I don't know if I would go so far as calling school shootings a "routine danger."
Buy we have to cover them when they happen...and one could make the argument that something like this can't be covered too exhaustively because the more we find out about the mindset of the shooter and communicate that with the public...the more we educate people on what to look for, and possibly help prevent something similar from happening in the future.
It's like the thing we all hate to see but need to know. I'd sure want to know if it happened in my neighborhood. But I have to agree with V that we need to focus on covering it RESPONSIBLY -- not just going live with "breaking news" every time we get a new fact ("We've just learned the shooter's favorite color was blue!") -- but getting to the root causes in hopes of preventing them. There's now much more attention that ever before on dealing with bullies and threats made in school -- in part, I hope, because we've brought some attention to that. But you bring up a good point, fka: we can't ignore the more routine dangers our kids face (like obesity!). And we parents also have to be gatekeepers for our children and the children we know and love. Even though it's available, we can't let them watch this kind of coverage 24/7. It's damaging to their little minds. T
I found you through Blogging Baby.
Of course you have to cover this news and I'm sure you were weeping inwardly along with the rest of us.
I do wonder about so much coverage of the perps though. Which purpose will it serve? Will it make us more alert to danger or will it encourage copycats who want their 15 minutes of fame even if they die for it?
I don't know. I waffle back and forth.
Welcome to blogworld. I'm adding you to my links.
Ann (aka granny)
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