Since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, more than 311,000 U.S. students have experienced gun violence at school. While gun violence in schools is still rare, and mass shootings even rarer, there are still at least 311,000 families who have had to speak with their children or teens about gun violence and the many complicated topics that are inextricably intertwined.
Even if a family or school hasn’t been directly impacted by gun violence in schools, it is likely their children or students have questions and fears surrounding it. As adults, processing something as senseless and terrifying as a school shooting is extremely difficult and in some cases nearly impossible to fathom, so it’s understandable that children and teens might have a difficult time as well.
For students who witness school violence, it’s safe to say most of their lives have been forever changed.
“With children, in particular, safety and stability are really the two most important things that they need. They thrive in environments where there’s predictability, where there are boundaries, where they know what’s coming next. When incidents like [a school shooting] happen, they completely shatter any kind of sense that children may have had of knowing what is going to come up during the next period, what is going to come up when I go home after school, what’s going to happen tomorrow and the day after,” Teodora Pavkovic, a psychologist and parenting coach, said in an interview with Campus Safety. “They might struggle to make sense of not just the incident that happened, but life in general. Any concept of life they may have had up until that point may really be shaken. They may start to expand their fears into other areas, things that don’t really seem particularly rational or realistic.”
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Amy Rock Editorial, LLC 