I grew up differently than today’s kids.  We were latch key kids.  My older sister used to get off the school bus and walk to my school.  She would get on an elevator-go to the top floor and pick me up.  We’d head down the elevator together hand in hand and walk home. Sometimes we would stop and play with the colorfully capped vials that were spewed across the empty lots between my school and our apartment.  She would let us into our first floor apartment with a key she wore around her neck dangling from a shoe string. She would make us an afternoon snack and we would play until our mother came home from work.

I must admit, I even do a double take if I see a child as old as twelve walking home alone with a bike or basketball clutched securely under one’s arm. I immediately think: Where’s that kid’s parents? Then I have to stop myself.

Wait, it’s still fairly light outside and the child’s safely trotting on a sidewalk and they’re not a toddler or infant. I need to remind myself that when I was that age in the 90’s I was helping to cook dinner, do laundry and clean the house (begrudgingly, but the expectation was there).  I realize that in today’s times there are so many different things children of today don’t do that I did.  However, I would be at a fault if I didn’t mention all the things children of today experience that I never had to deal with as a child.

My elementary school teachers taught me year after year how to “Stop! Drop! And Roll!”.  They instructed me to never talk to strangers, never take candy from someone I didn’t know or even the importance of knowing my home phone number (anyone still have landlines at home anymore?).

Fast forward less than 30 years later. As a teacher, I had to teach my second grade students the importance of staying silent during a school lock down. Children as young as kindergarten have been trained on what to do in order to stay alive in what used to be the safest place a child could be.

As I type this my heart swells with sadness as I think of the innocence lost on an entire generation of children that are trained from the beginning of the school year on how to make themselves as small and quiet as possible in order to avoid death.

Please share your thoughts.

God bless us all.

R  E  S  O  U  R  C  E  S

List of School Shootings in 2019

How School Shootings Have Changed the Teaching Profession

Talking to Kids About School Shootings