The Rev. Dr. Chris Tuttle, Westminster Presbyterian Church, "Where can our children be safe?"
Where can our children be safe?
---The Rev. Dr. Chris Tuttle
“That’s where I’ll be, dad. If… (long pause) …something happens.”
I was driving my 6th grader to school, inching forward in the carpool line. The Friday beforehand his middle school had been the target of an online threat of violence. The day before there was a threat against the high school our other son attends. This time it was a hoax, something replicated nationally, and our older son showed us a screenshot of the name of the school plastered on top of a picture of an assault rifle. That day, at the high school, someone had also pulled the fire alarm, more fear rippling out, and the teenagers spread out across the campus, seeking safety.
Those threats prompted a conversation with both of our boys who are still at home (we also have a daughter at college): “If there is a shooting at your school, know I am going to get in the car and get as close as I can to come find you. Pick a spot on or near campus for us to meet in case you lose your phone and we can’t communicate.”
So outside of both of their schools we have an assigned meeting spot. That was what our youngest was pointing out to me, to make sure I knew what he meant. On the side of that building, around behind those bushes, dad. That’s where I’ll be. That’s where you can come find me.
We can trace this reality in all sorts of ways. Previous generations had bomb drills, and now our children are coming of age with lockdown drills, the threat of gun violence pervasive. I was in college during the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, and we sat in our apartment glued to the television. For many of us, this wasn’t something that we had known to be afraid of. Now, it is an inescapable part of our lives and our planning, and we can say the names of countless places we know little about except for the fact that a horrific act of gun violence occurred there: Parkland, Newtown, Uvalde. The preschool at our church has a thoughtful security system, and they have worked with a consultant from the sheriff’s department on versions of lockdown drills. They have euphemisms, language they employ with the two- and three-year-olds when they ask them to huddle quietly in the corner, covers for the windows so shooters can’t see inside, plans for where they could go and how they might handle a terrifying situation like this. From the beginning of my children’s time in elementary school, the principal would share the planning they do, and she would say, “We try and reinforce two things: 1) you are safe at this school, and 2) the adults have a plan.” The children practice what they would do in a crisis, as parents watch extra layers of bullet-proof doors go in the front of the school. I suspect every institution you all are a part of has had these conversations, every school you pass by, every school your children or grandchildren or neighbor attend.
What is it doing to our children to have to learn to navigate these kinds of environments? What is this era of constant vigilance doing to their hearts, minds, and spirits? This is worthy of many more blog posts later on, but I’d like to spend just a little time thinking about what effect the threat of gun violence is having on parents, and what role faith communities can play.
Just as children have to live with a heightened sense of awareness around gun violence, so do their parents. It feels as though every scenario around a threat gives parents a number of choices that all seem wrong: Should I make my child go to school even if they aren’t comfortable? Should I let them stay home again? Where is that line? Every family has their own ways to make decisions around this and, sadly, it is important that parents and children have their own frameworks for discussion. We are more likely to send our middle schooler and are also more likely to give our high schooler more say in what happens. As everyone gets older, we include them a bit more in the decision-making process. Our older child has access to social media, which he can use as a source of information as we are discussing things. What are you hearing from your peers? What do they know about the threat? What is everyone’s comfort level today? It is also important to name that we have the privilege of choice – my spouse and I have flexible jobs, we live close to both schools, our older son drives himself to and from school each day. We can make one choice in the morning and change that choice later in the day if we want to.
We also have conversations with our children about how much media we consume as we learn about these threats. It is easy to descend into doom-scrolling, and the internet is not the best place for reasoned conversation. We watch the news together or look through social media. We connect with other parents and friends. Then we put our phones down and try and talk about what we know, and what we don’t know, and how our student feels. We talk together about our worry for each other. We plan places we could, in theory, find each other in an emergency. And we also talk together about how our worry and our fear cannot hold us captive, as we know we all need to learn and grow, children need to be in school to connect with their peers and continue to develop their God-given gifts.
I was interested to see how this mounting toll was recently noted in an Advisory from the United States Surgeon General on the “Mental Health and Well Being of Parents.” The Advisory highlights the urgent need to better support parents, caregivers, and families to help our communities thrive.
“Parents have a profound impact on the health of our children and the health of society. Yet parents and caregivers today face tremendous pressures, from familiar stressors such as worrying about their kids’ health and safety and financial concerns, to new challenges like navigating technology and social media, a youth mental health crisis, an epidemic of loneliness that has hit young people the hardest. As a father of two kids, I feel these pressures too,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “With this Advisory, I am calling for a fundamental shift in how we value and prioritize the mental health and well-being of parents. I am also outlining policies, programs, and individual actions we can all take to support parents and caregivers.”
The Advisory continues, noting there are approximately 63 million parents living with children under the age of 18 in the United States, and there are millions of additional caregivers who hold the primary responsibility for caring for children. This population experiences a range of unique stressors that come with raising children; including common demands of parenting, financial strain and economic instability, time demands, concerns about children’s health and safety, parental isolation and loneliness, difficulty managing technology and social media, and cultural pressures. In addition to the common stressors listed above, mental health conditions disproportionately affect some parents and caregivers, including those facing circumstances like family or community violence, poverty, and racism and discrimination, among others. (link here: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/08/28/us-surgeon-general-issues-advisory-mental-health-well-being-parents.html)
Faith communities are situated in the heart of so much mental health complexity. We support parents, especially in an age of increasing gun violence, in a few ways:
We speak about it openly. This is a very small thing, but all the wonderful advocates for mental health awareness on this blog know the power of speaking about things openly and honestly. We speak in worship and in the church’s prayers about the pervasive threat of gun violence, as we pray not only for victims but for a more just and peaceful world. This is NOT as it should be, and this is NOT the world God intends.
We convene groups of parents at different ages and stages (parents of young children, parents of youth, parents of college students) to share their concerns and support each other. We do a lot of checking in with teenagers and parents around these things. One of the gifts of everyone having phones means it is a little easier to check in with parents when we hear of a threat or an act of violence – like the shooting on UNCs campus last year - or for our youth staff and volunteers to check in with groups of teenagers at a certain school. They can text that day and get together to talk more later.
We advocate. This is obviously a bit more complicated in a polarized environment, and in a season where it is difficult to get political traction in our state and in congress. But we should not overlook the many wonderful organizations in each of our communities working to advocate for gun laws that can keep all families safer. Are there a team of advocates in your congregation? What possibilities exist?
We pray. Here is a prayer from the Presbyterian Church’s Disaster Relief Agency – which is increasing deployed not only to natural disasters but to sites of violence to support local congregations - in 2015 after the shooting on a community college campus in Oregon:
God of our life, whose presence sustains us in every circumstance,
As the sound of gunfire again echoes over a college campus
we seek the grounding power of your love and compassion.
We open our hearts in anger, sorrow and hope:
For those who have been lost: brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends
Your children, who sought to learn and grow together
whose lives have been cut off in the midst of new learning and hopeful growth.
We pray for those who have been spared and those whose lives are changed forever
that they may find solace, sustenance, and strength in the hard days to come.
We give thanks for first responders:
who ran toward gunfire, rather than away;
who dropped everything to save the wounded and comfort survivors.
We pray for doctors and nurses and mental health providers
Who repair what has been broken,
who try to bring healing and hope in the face of the unchecked principalities and powers of violence .
We ask for sustaining courage for those who are suffering and traumatized.
Once again, Holy One, we cry, how long, O Lord?
We wonder, when will it be enough?
We pray you will forgive our tolerance of cultures of violence and impel us by your
Spirit to renew our commitment to work for an end to gun violence in our nation.
In the wake of an event that should be impossible to contemplate
but which has become all too common in our experience,
open our eyes, break our hearts,
and turn our hands to the movements of your Spirit,
that our anger and sorrow may unite in service to build a reign of peace,
where the lion and the lamb may dwell together,
and terror no longer holds sway over our common life.
In the name of Christ, our healer and our Light, we pray, Amen.
(https://pda.pcusa.org/page/prayer-gun-violence-roseberg-oregon/)
Chris Tuttle grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, and attended school at Davidson College and Columbia Theological Seminary. He has been the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian since 2008, and lives in Durham with his spouse, the Rev. Carrie Rhoads Tuttle, three children, and a poorly behaved pandemic puppy.
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