The other day I was driving the kids home from school and they were especially excited. Something happened that had them riled up a bit more than normal. Before they could form cogent thoughts (my two-year-old yells over everyone else and must be heard first but has a hard time getting it all out sometimes) I remembered receiving an email about a lockdown drill that had occurred that day.
I must admit, when I get a phone call from school during the middle of the day, I get worried. Nothing good comes from a mid day call… Either one of our kids is sick and they need to be picked up, or someone got hurt. I get the same pang of fear when I get an email from school with the words LOCK DOWN. It is a special kind of fear that makes me stop and make sure I read everything correctly.
In this case, the lock down was only a drill. My two-year old was able to let me know that they had to be quiet and that he followed instructions like a good boy. But I noticed things were a little different for my 5-year-old. She has been through lock down drills, and even a real lock down experience when there was police activity in the area.
This time she wanted more information. I explained that going into lockdown was for her protection whenever there was a ‘bad-guy’ in the area, and that her school is a very safe place to be. She pressed on, though. “What do bad guys want?” She asked. With a heavy heart I explained that sometimes people make bad decisions, like when they take things that don’t belong to them. Usually, I said, bad guys are just trying to get away and hide someplace, but sometimes they can be angry and want to hurt people- which is why you lock your doors and pretend like no one is in your room.
The concept of a ‘bad guy’ is surprisingly easy for my kids to understand. I think that has something to do with all the cartoons they watch. There is always a bad guy doing something wrong. But those cartoon bad guys usually end up apologizing or turn into good guys in the end. It’s horrifying and sad to think about how that is not the case in real life. Problems can’t be traced back to a simple misunderstanding that can be fixed, and there is no good way to explain that.
By the time we got back home I had eased her worries. That is, until she started thinking about being safe at home. “What if we have a lock down at home?” she asked. Is there anything sadder than when your daughter is wondering if she is safe in her own home?
I assured her that we always have our doors locked and no one can come in our house unless we want them to. This took a little more explaining that I thought it would. In fact, I went around the house and showed her the cameras we have mounted and the home security app on my phone that shows all angles of our house. She reacted really positively to this! I told her no one could come near our house without me knowing about it and she said that it made her feel safe.
I don’t know if I handled it the right way or not, but I do feel like she knows that the school and her teachers keep her safe when she is there, and her parents keep her safe at home. This is a tough topic, and one I can see that she is starting to grasp. In wanting to be better prepared for the next drill, I started doing some research on the best ways to talk to your kids about this kind of thing. Remember, there is a lot of information online, these are just some of the main points I found that help:
- Try not to hide anything – kids respond better when they know the facts and hard truths behind what is happening.
- Only get into the details of something when your kids are older and can handle the conversation. Oops, I think I may be guilty of this one. Younger kids want to know why and why and why- and the more you give them the more they will focus on it.
- Stress the unlikelihood of anything bad happening – Kids in kindergarten are old enough to understand that you are practicing for something that might not ever happen.
- Don’t get stuck on the why these things happen, remember to focus on the how. Kids know how to follow rules and receive praise for following directions. This should be no different. By concentrating on the procedural aspect of the conversation you can lessen the worrying about the why.
- Talk in a language they understand. Try using a comparison like this, “There has never been a fire at school, right? But you still need to have a fire drill. This is just like that.”
- Above all, stay calm and try not to freak out that you are having this conversation with your baby. When you show that the conversation makes you upset, scared, and uneasy, they will pick up on it and will feel nervous as well. Let them know they are safe!
As my kids are getting bigger, the same old explanations don’t continue to hold up. We all think of the Santa or Tooth Fairy conversations as ones that might be difficult to have as kids get older. I don’t think I was as prepared to have the scarier versions of these conversations; ones where bad guys really do exist, and that the Paw Patrol can’t be called in to save the day.
I worry endlessly that we are doing the right thing and providing an environment where our kids feel safe and care free. It’s tough enough for kids being out in the world and trying to learn how things work, and it is clear that they crave the truth. We have to acknowledge the world we live in, and if we practice our drills with open, loving communication they’ll be better prepared to understand the world around them.
