My Pledge

There was a shooting today at a local high school.  So far, it sounds like an unhappy troubled student who came to school and targeted different kids.  As I am typing, they are reporting a second student died.  5 total were shot.  I watched the news quite a bit today and of course, there were the usual comments.  We never thought it could happen here.  This is a safe town.  He was troubled, he was bullied.  There was a kid interviewed who said they had been friends but then he got into that gothic phase, and was a loner.

One of the things that really struck me though was the one comment from a reporter who was waiting at the safety building where the suspect had been taken.  They didn't believe that his parents had come.  No one was there for the kid who was arrested.  The one who woke up that morning and decided to take a gun and a knife to school and shot five of his classmates.

You have to think not only of the students in a tragedy like this but of their parents.  The photos of the parents streaming into the school to pick up their children.  The reports of all the texts and tweets and posts on Facebook that were more reliable and current than the news was reporting.

Kids are growing up in a much different world than we lived in.  Bullying is not new, kids that don't fit in are not new, kids feeling helpless and depressed, not new.  What is new is the inability to get away from it.  With Facebook and Twitter, and YouTube, not only can you be a social outcast, it can be broadcast for everyone to see.  I can only imagine.  I can't imagine being in high school and having that kind of pressure.  I can't imagine getting a text from my child that there is a gunman at their school.  I can't imagine being the mother of the child who is that gunman.

Here is my pledge.  I will know my kids.  Even when they don't want me to.  I will know who their friends are.  I will follow them on Facebook, join the stupid twitter, friend their friends, and anything else that is new by then.  I will figure out their passwords, monitor their texts, read their diaries, whatever it takes.  If school becomes a miserable experience for my kids, so miserable that I even suspect that they are suicidal, or homicidal, or anything, I will pull them out and homeschool.  It's just not worth it.  This whole situation just scares the crap out of me.

I don't have much of a life of my own.  My life now, and probably for the rest of my years revolves around the three little people sleeping upstairs.  I can't imagine being in my forties and fifties and so wrapped up in my own life and doing my own thing that I will not see my children and know their lives.  Their heartbreak, their worries, their fears.  I want them to be able to talk to me, to tell me what is bothering them.  To know that no matter what, I love them.  That I am in their corner, that everything will get better.  I want to know their friends, to be their friend.  Not in the way that I don't parent, but that I don't hold myself apart from them.  That they can confide in me, that I will love and accept them always.

I will empower them to not be silent bystanders.  To step in if someone is being bullied, to help when they can.  To be kind, to be fair, and to not turn a blind eye to someone being bullied.  To show them that their actions have consequences, that it is much better to help people than to tear them down.    

I will not be the mother who just didn't see it coming.  I will not be the mother who stands by and lets her child be bullied and says kids will be kids.  I will not let my child sink into depression without consulting a therapist.  I will not be the mother who doesn't show up at the police station when her child is arrested for committing an atrocious act.

Hug your babies tighter tonight.  You really never know what might happen.  You can't always be there, and you can't always know what is going on in your child's mind.   But I swear to God, I will try.