On a crisp January morning, I walked into the second- and third-grade Sunday school class, filled with boys and girls returning from the Christmas break and sporting their warmest winter gear. I have learned that children can see through any pretense, so I aim to create a comfortable space in which they can ask and discuss tough questions. Each week we focus on a part of the Bible, and the plan for the new year was to dive into Jesus’ parables.
The parables are sometimes confusing. The idea of loving your enemy, even someone who knocked you down at recess, can be tough for second-graders. But experience is essential to learning. We don’t want to simply tell a story; we want to listen to how these kids apply the story to their lives. Jesus talks a lot about letting go of our worries, so I asked them, “What causes you to worry?” I thought back to my own elementary-school years, expecting to hear about grades, bullies at school, moving or even divorce. That was not the response I received.
A girl raised her hand to answer.
“At my school we have these drills…” she trailed off.
“Yeah, bad guy drills,” another added.
“One day I wasn’t in my classroom and there was a real one, not a drill. It was scary,” another said.
“Yeah, one day the bad guy had a weapon and was right outside my classroom window.”
“I get so scared when my classmates can’t be quiet during these drills,” said another.
The stories kept coming. What was I going to say? Sentimentality was not going to be helpful. These children needed help processing their experience. They needed a way to make sense of the violence they were exposed to and to heal.
I am neither a therapist nor an elementary teacher; I am a nurse trained in trauma-informed care. So I was already aware that people who have experienced trauma need validation of their experience. My first step was to recognize the reality of what my students were telling me and to call it what it is: evil. We talked about what to do when facing evil, and they understood the importance and power of prayer—even giving examples of how prayer helped them understand other challenging circumstances. Many had discussed their fears with their families and developed strategies to help with these feelings. But while they recognized the acute fear associated with these drills, they did not realize the long-term effect of this type of stress and why it still concerned them weeks later.
Does stress change our brains?
School shootings continue to rise, with 46 this year as of Sept. 6, two days after the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. As we learned about this most recent tragedy, there were signs pointing to the violent behavior of the shooter, but instead of focusing on mental health services or gun reform, governments have largely chosen to put the responsibility of mitigating gun violence on students themselves.
Active shooter drills have become more common, and most states require schools to conduct them each year. It appears that these drills are here to stay, but we must be aware of their negative effects. A recent study by the Georgia Institute of Technology found a 42 percent increase in reported feelings of anxiety and a 39 percent increase in reported feelings of depression for 90 days after active shooter drills for K-12 students. Students perceive that school shootings are a real threat, and many are ill-prepared to process this realization.
The human brain is designed to identify threats within our environment, but this can become a problem in situations like active-shooter drills. Our brains can mistakenly process the drill as real and turn on ourfight-or-flight response. For children in particular, the emotions associated with these drills can become unhealthy.
Our imaginations have great power to form mental pictures of potential realities. These images inform our understanding of the world, and if our minds become clouded from ongoing stress, our long-term brain health and higher-level thinking can be negatively affected. We do not fully understand the long-term impact of active-shooter drills on children, but there appears to be a strong connection to worsened mental well-being. And we are learning that the impacts of mental illness, including depression, throughout one’s life are far-reaching—leading to decreased brain health and nearly doubling the risk of dementia later in life.
We must address this trauma with our neighbors—our families, churches and communities. The first step is offering families space to process and education on how to recognize and respond to one another’s stress.
Our families notice when we are stressed, and the ways we respond to that stress can influence our children’s behavior. For instance, it is important to talk about how we feel and to describe our emotions in ways our family members can understand. Using tools like the feeling wheel, a circular diagram with six core feelings that can assist us in creating an emotional vocabulary, can help families find the language to describe their internal environment. Another solution is setting up physical spaces for reflection and regulation. When we pick up on our less desirable feelings and remove ourselves from an environment instead of lashing out, we enhance our emotional intelligence and process stress in a healthier way.
We have been gifted with love and hope in an unstable world, and we can accept this gift through acknowledging, processing and releasing our burdens. Stress is inevitable, and sometimes we need help dealing with it. Working with a trusted therapist or spiritual advisor can allow us to move through our own struggles and remind us that we have a choice in how we respond. We can provide a model for our children as they learn how to process trauma and move forward with hope.
At the same time, solutions aimed at decreasing the sense of danger within schools are needed. For example, smartphones and social media have been identified as potential causes of worsening mental health among children and teens. A growing number of mental health professionals and parents are therefore recommending later introductions to smartphones. This year, schools in Los Angeles County will move to a cellphone-free environment; policies like this might enable children and teens to be less overwhelmed by outside pressures and focus on their present environment.
Involvement in our local schools is another key to decreasing this sense of danger. Local churches and families should look to partner with public schools, helping to build relationships and create spaces where children can ask tough questions and get additional support if needed (including after-school Bible clubs and Sunday school).
Violence, mental illness and brain health may seem like tough issues to tackle, but one verse comforts me when I consider the challenge: “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (Jn 1:5). In other words, while darkness persists in our world, so does the light. Our children are up against a terrible darkness that brings not only short-term symptoms but also chronic disease. Our role is to be a resource, demonstrating a faith that is rooted in the redemptive power of Jesus. This is a lifelong process that sets children up to understand when they need mental, physical or spiritual help to process their stress so that their imaginations are not stuck in a cycle of fight-or-flight but can instead grow images of hope shining a light on the darkness all around them.
