“I hope we don’t get shot tonight while we’re at the movies.” As I navigated a left-hand turn onto a busy street in early evening traffic, the unexpected words came suddenly, yet calmly, from my then 13 year old daughter’s mouth. Pardon ?!!!
It was late fall/early winter of last year and snow was gently falling as I drove my two youngest to the movie theatre. The day had been quite normal and calm until this point. They had spent a great day with friends, everyone happy with the light snow, and we’d just dropped the last friend off.
The two had decided the night before that they would use my daughter’s gift card from her birthday a few months prior for admission and my son would buy the snacks. I’d have a couple of hours to make work phone calls and go for an early evening walk close to the theatre while I waited for their movie to finish. With anticipation of the movie and some early season Christmas carols playing in the car, all seemed light-hearted and peaceful. And then this comment.
Like probably any parent would have done, I stumbled and felt unsure of how to respond. Really unsure. Unsure because the natural thing we want to do as parents is to assure our children. We want to protect them, comfort them and reassure them it will be alright. More than anything, I wanted to say, “ Oh my goodness! You don’t need to worry about that. It’s a very safe theatre. I wouldn’t take you anywhere that wasn’t safe!” but two things stopped me.
The first was that my daughter is a very quiet, practical, pragmatic person. If she expresses her thoughts, it’s not dramatic or just for the sake of talking. She’s an observer and a thinker. Thoughts and feelings percolate a loooong time before being expressed. They are deeply felt and a quick, glib waving away of the comment would be highly disrespectful of her feelings.
The second was that there was a feeling creeping up within me that although I wanted to wave away her statement as being unrealistic, I realized it wasn’t entirely. Was it likely that there would be a shooting at the the movie theatre that evening? No, not at all. Was it quite a bit more likely than it was several years ago? Unfortunately, I’d have to say yes. So, although it wasn’t even moderately likely, my kids are still growing up thinking about things that I never had to have cross my mind as a kid. Ever. At no time as a child did I go to see a movie with any kind of thought that I might shot. Things are somewhat different now though. The church I went to as a child didn’t lock all its side doors during the service. The church my children go to, along with us, now does.
The way news is delivered and the level of access we have to it is likely part of this. The seemingly constant barrage of news brings us information and endless details about things that years ago people would have had to tune into the 6:00 broadcast to find out about, whereas now we get play by plays on developing details while having a family meal in a restaurant. You can’t even sit strategically because many restaurants have giant screens on every wall. You can hardly ignore them even if you try really hard. Waiting to pick up my youngest son from basketball puts me face to face with the 24 hour station if I choose to sit down in the seating area. In times past, there would have been a good-sized article in the newspaper about a crime. Now, there is often video footage and it’s available to be watched at any time. History is full of bad news and dangerous happenings but people only heard about a fraction of them. Now, events that happen thousands of miles away feel strangely close because of the degree of detail we have about them. In fact, I suspect the comment my daughter made was related to remembering a movie theatre shooting from another country a few years ago.
Yes, the news process can seem to magnify crime but there have been some very unfortunate realities in the region we live in. She knew that her brothers were shopping at a mall about 45 minutes away and a couple of days later, shoppers at that same mall were fleeing due to a gun man. One of the main libraries about 20 minutes away that we have been visiting for years had a shooting in its parking lot during a community event a few months before this comment. I wish I could say that it hasn’t had one since, but the Recreation Centre about a couple of hundred metres away from it, the one that I used to work at as a job coach twice a week and that her older brothers skateboard at, had an early morning shooting a few months ago. We knew this firsthand and right away because my sons and their friend arrived to skateboard there and found it surrounded with police tape and multiple emergency vehicle presence. During a regular weekend morning, as joggers and dog walkers cruises around and the arena opened for kids’ hockey teams to arrive, multiple shots had been fired and a young man was killed.
These are about a quarter of the events within 30-40 km of our house that my daughter would have heard about in the last few years. None of them happened in “bad” areas. These weren’t back alley crimes in the middle of the night but rather crimes in bright public community spaces with the general public and often families. In fact, less than a year before this comment, a 17-year old had been stabbed to death by a 16-year-old during a fight after school about 0.5 km from the movie theatre we were headed to. This, in likely the highest socioeconomic area of our community, so it’s not always a matter of simply “staying out of bad areas.”
As I write, I wonder why I mention these events so specifically. Wouldn’t it be less triggering to simply say that I have noticed an uptick in violence in the past 20 years? I think I’m writing some of them out because I want to be clear about what many kids are living in the midst of and the seriousness of what they are taking in.
So, what did I say to my daughter? Although all of this has taken a few paragraphs to express, I think that aspects of each of those thoughts collided in my mind in the second after her comment. I think I fumbled out something like, “Oh wow, L, I wasn’t expecting you to say that. I didn’t know you were feeling that way.” And in that moment, that was it. My son added some things, fumbling around as well, and I dropped them off, knowing there was a very unfinished conversation hanging in the air.
So, my snowy, early evening walk I’d been looking forward to shifted gears a bit. I still had a really nice walk, but I felt funny. I knew that by now, they’d be enjoying the movie. My daughter hadn’t seemed gripped with fear. In fact, if anything, it was an eerily matter of fact comment. She didn’t hesitate to hop out of the car and into the theatre with her brother. It may have just been a passing comment. On the other hand, I knew that it was a troubling thought for a child to have, for any person to have and in hindsight, I could think of a few other similar comments she’d made, just not so specific.
I realized I needed to keep thinking about ways to help us stay informed about the world without having the information overtake our minds. I wanted for us to be able to pray for hurting people, both victims and their families and perpetrators and their families. I didn’t want us to turn our backs on other people’s difficult circumstances just because it gets in the way of our day or our mood. However, I think if it gets in the way of a child’s peace of mind or emotionally bombards them, it’s a different thing. I realized I needed to be more conscious.
What did I decide to do moving forward? Nothing particularly earth shattering, I guess, but I did bring it up again later that evening. I acknowledged and empathized and talked about the effect that news has on all of us because it makes everything seem really close and constant. I try to acknowledge what the kids are saying they feel in the moment, even if just briefly, and then go away with it a bit ( not too long though) so that I can sort out how to respond from a place that supports where they are on a certain topic rather from where my emotions are running.
So, in other words, I don’t have any big answers here other than openness to communication and trying to be more conscious of over-exposure where possible. I don’t actively hide the news but I also don’t rush in with the latest information about back to back mass shootings. We can pray and care deeply, but broadly, for hurting people in the world without naming violent crimes each day.
Kids are all different and some may not be particularly affected by the same thing that others are but I think it’s important that we keep an eye and ear open. There is a LOT of good news in the world as well. It doesn’t always catch the headlines as quickly but actually there are a number of good news stories that do. Maybe by making sure that we acknowledge and give thanks for those, it helps build and maintain their sense of goodness and wonder in the ordinary.
I almost didn’t post this because it felt pretty heavy but as I was deciding a few weeks ago, an update on two mass shootings popped up on my phone. At first I thought that I must have accidentally signed up for updates but then realized that it’s a new feature with automatic news pop-ups and it’s activated unless you de-activate. Timely:(. Then, I turned on the news to find out that in a city about 30 minutes away from us, had 14 shootings that weekend, with 17 people this weekend. I know this is not to the degree that some other places deal with but it feels different here now and it must feel different to our kids too. I don’t imagine I’m the only parent who wonders how to navigate all this information. So, in the end, I decided to post.
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Wow. That comment would be a tough one to respond to. I find I’m back and forth a lot about how much news needs to be on around the kids for this very reason. Even for myself, I’m aware of how much I even need to be watching. Lately I’ve been focusing more on tuning in for specific things ( interviews, political debates) rather than watching every night. As you mentioned, the daily updates are hard to miss anyway between the public TVs and Internet.
CC, I often find myself doing the same thing as far tuning in for specific things. You make such a good point of being aware of our own minds as well and just how much we need to be taking in or not. It’s different for each person, of course. I think I’m better to check in midday if I can, rather than begin or end my day with the news. There really are so many good news stories or even important things that are tough but maybe not constantly traumatic that we can bring up and chat about with kids so that they’re still up to speed with lots that’s going on. Thanks for your comment:).
Hi Erin. Thanks for posting about this really difficult topic. It can be a pretty scary world out there for both kids and parents and you’ve given a good heads up to parents about the importance of their response when kids express their anxieties.
Hi Erin. Thanks for posting about this really difficult topic. It can be a pretty scary world out there for both kids and parents and you’ve given a good heads up to parents about the importance of their response when kids express their anxieties.
Hi Sarah. I wish I had better answers to give when they express their anxieties but yes, we do need to be think this stuff through as far as how we respond and that’s something, at least. Thanks so much for your comment:).