Well today started out not as planned. I woke up and heard my freshman in high school facetiming and talking about shooters at the schools around town. I hadn’t had my coffee and was wondering what I really heard so I asked her. She said it was all over snapchat that “people” are threatening all the schools in Fort Collins, CO. I immediately called the school and school resource officer. Of course no one answered – they are busy working on this mess. My daughter wanted to go to school so I took her. Bad mistake. An hour into her school day I got an email from the district saying it was a vague threat and they would increase police presence just in case. Then I got worried and texted her that I would be right over to get her. She was worried about her friends so I said she needed their parents’ permission before I could take any kids out of that school. Now we are only 90 minutes into the school day and there is still a ton of chatter and several arrests at multiple schools. We cannot tell what is real and what isn’t at this time but we got permission from 4 parents to get their kids so I went and got them. 2 girls were holding back tears. We came home and then the sweet innocence of youth shined through. One girl said she was sad to come home because the next class was a class with her crush in it. Cute and sweet huh? It reminds me how resilient our kids are. We as adults tend to focus on ruminate on stuff while children move on to the next thins We are only a few hours into the day and I will make more posts as things develop. Keep praying for our kids! Keep praying for us all!
Part 2
The day progressed and things settled down. We received 3 email updates from the school district notifying us that everything was safe. There was at least 1 arrest verified but the police and school district claimed it was an unrelated incident that got blown out of proportion. With social media things really got out of control fast. The kids were on strings of 30 others spreading all kinds of rumors. What really struck me is that my friends who have kids at charter schools had way fewer issues. First, they were on lockdown and second, the kids do not have unlimited access to their cell phones. I really think kids should not have full access to their phones all day. What are we saying here and how are we raising our kids? The social media and stress that my kids felt was so much worse than my friends’ children. At this point I don’t think we will ever know what really happened that day. I think they will be investigating for a while and I am not sure we will never know the real extent of the threat. What we can learn from this is to pray for our children and make sure to tell them daily how much you love them. Teach them to pray and to be strong. They will need their faith in this crazy world.