How To Talk To Kids After A School Shooting?!

      “How To Talk To Kids After A School Shooting?” And, my favorite: “What was the shooter’s motive?” Headlines everywhere.

Stop and digest that for a minute. Twenty six years since Columbine and an obscene amount of mass murders later, this is a question? Kids in Kindergarten through high school routinely participate in drills where they hide on the floor, find objects to throw, learn how to barricade doors, then wait while police and firemen rattle those doors as well as their fragile, developing brains and you dare think — even in the lucky absence of one of these monstrous horrors at their own school — that kids don’t already know something is wrong with adults? They know! They are very clear that something is deeply wrong with adults — who they also know should be protecting them!

They are traumatized. Every single one. In one way or another. Routinely. And, an entire city of young people (and staff, families!) have lived or died through the actual event. Trauma, trauma everywhere and nothing to do but wring our hands.

 “How To Talk To Kids After A School Shooting”?

Shut up. Shut the hell up. Kids know what they need to know. They know this happens because we let it happen. Tell them to pray. Teach them the latest mandated protocol. Last one we learned at my high school was called “Alice.” Perfect. Through the goddamned Looking Glass, kids, that’s where the adults have gone. Mad. Completely, tragically, mad.

Moms, Dads, Caregivers, here’s an idea for Back To School:

Stuff a cuddly care bear in your kids' lunchbox or backpack. They can toss it onto one of the burgeoning, now commonplace piles at the next inevitable school memorial. Because there will be one. There is one. There will be more. Because adults with the power to act DO NOTHING.

Here’s how to talk to kids about school shootings:

Tell the truth: We don’t care. This is America. We love guns. We love guns more than kids, more than people. We believe guns will solve any dispute — handier, quicker, than de-escalation techniques — they’re so sexy and simple! So much less expensive (really? data says no.....) than funding mental health initiatives, developing durable social support systems, and striving to understand one another.

So, tell the gang as they head off to Circle Time, fractions and American Studies the goddamn truth: We don't care. We haven’t cared, and, we won’t care. Tell them that.

Then, teach them about “thoughts and prayers” and explain in detail the dark reality of our Holy Trinity: The Gun Lobby, The Sacrosanct Second Amendment and The Impotent United States Congress. Tell them how money keeps the guns rolling off the presses and lining the pockets of those in power in this, these United? States, the most redundantly heavily armed nation in the world.

Teach them to hide on the floor and throw shit at the sad soul who, one day, saw no other way to be seen or heard in this underfunded social support country than to grab Bampy’s AR-15 and off a raft of his classmates and teachers.

Just encourage kids to throw shit. Throw shit. You can be sure the perpetrator endured truckloads of life’s shit before this day — commonly, his last wretched day on this ill-begotten planet.

That’s how to talk to kids. But, know this: Kids got good shit detectors. They know the deal; they see you, us. They know who has failed them.

 I’ve got another idea: Why don’t we shut the hell up and let the kids do the talking? Why don’t we STFU and let the teachers, the parents, the SURVIVORS, do the talking? Why don’t we SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN!!!!!!!

And then, one day, maybe, just maybe, “How To Talk To Kids After a School Shooting” will never be a question we ask again.

Never, ever again.

lisa stathoplos