Kindergarten in 2008 – A Guest Blog From janethegreat

For those of us living in cities, looking at our friends with families and children who have embraced Post Urban Culture as the pioneers of a better life, today’s guest blog from janethegreat goes to show new levels equate to new problems.

 

Enjoy!

 

Our son who is in Kindergarten came home full of rapid-fire questions yesterday.

 

“Why do you turn the lights off and lock the door? Why do the teachers say keep quiet and line up near the bathroom (in the kindergarten room)? Why is there a bad man in my school?”

 

I had no clue. So I asked what happened. “There was a smackdown drill” he replied. I quickly ruled out that his elementary school was preparing for an assault by Triple H or John Cena. “Was it a lockdown drill?” I asked. “Yeah, what if a bad man gets into my school and wants to hurt kids?” he responded.

 

“Well, just like a fire drill (which he is not fazed by) its practice. It’s a way to keep kids safe in case something bad happens” I said in my best Reassuring Mom Voice. For the next 5 minutes he explained anxiously that even though his teacher said it was ‘pretend’, he couldn’t shake the belief that someone bad was potentially loose in the school. This stuck with him throughout the next day, so I wrote his teacher a note asking her to be aware he was a bit stressed by the whole thing. She responded appropriately, gave him extra reassurance and the whole thing seems to have passed.

 

When I told the story to colleagues at work, several of them remembered bomb drills from their childhood instructing them to get under their desks in case of nuclear attack. And of course none of them ever had to truly act on it. It made me wonder if there is something different in a child’s perception of a larger, ‘impersonal’ event (such as a fire or bomb) versus a direct assault by another person? Does one event seem more frightening than the other to children (who haven’t experienced either)? Again, I have no clue.

 

I support the school for having lockdown drills (although I would have liked to have known they did them in the first place and what the protocol is). I hate the fact that this is something children, school personnel, and parents have to even consider. However, it’s a sensible response to prepare for the possibility of school violence. I guess this is all part of living in our current culture… For better and for worse, here we are…

Remember, send me a guest blog and I will post it.