Dayton Children’s Hospital pediatric psychologist Joy Miceli said Madison students will have two main issues on their mind going forward after Monday’s shooting at the Jr./Sr. High School — concern for their own safety and feeling sad for their classmates who were injured.
- Parents need to give their child the opportunity to express their feelings
- Parents should look for signs of anxiety
- Students need to return to school as soon as they can
The initial shock of Monday’s shooting at Madison Junior/Senior High School may have subsided, but students in the district continue to pose questions, wrestle with their emotions and express their fears.
Parents say the best thing they can do to help their children is offer an attentive ear, a warm embrace and an assurance that things will be better.
Jody Cole said once her 13- and 11-year-old daughters were picked up from the school and safely at home Monday, they expressed concern about an injured friend, inquired why the shooter did what he did and if his actions were bullying related and worried about how things would be when they returned to school.
Cole said she told her daughter that the school and its teachers have everyone’s best interests at heart.
“We can’t ask for any better teachers that care for our kids,” she said. “They treat them as if they were their own.”
Cole said her daughter’s fifth-grade teacher, MaryAnn Smith, said she wasn’t thinking about her family, just “the 23 faces staring at her and what she was going to protect them.”
That included getting those students behind and beneath desks assembled into the corner of the locked classroom.
“She said all she knew to do was give them Oreos,” Cole said. “She gave them Oreos and cried and prayed over them. She tried not to let them know how scared she was. She said she didn’t want to lie to them either, she did tell them that there was a gun, but that they were safe.”
Cole said she didn’t have answers regarding the shooter’s actions, but emphasized treating others the way they would want to be treated and the importance of reporting concerns about a potential situation to someone in charge.
“You guys are around this all day long. Don’t let it go on,” she said. “Tell somebody.”
Ron and Karey Prince said their children — a senior, junior, fifth grader and second grader — asked them why the shooting happened.
Reunited as a family at home, their 8-year-old daughter held onto her two eldest siblings and wouldn’t let them out of her sight, Karey Prince said.
“The first thing (she) said was ‘I’m not going back to school,’” Prince said. “She’s still saying that, but she can say it without crying now. I don’t know if she’ll be ready to go back (Wednesday), but her teacher did call, letting us know that she did handle it very well during the process, calming other kids down.
Prince said her two younger children talked about their teachers and how calm they were, how they kept students busy during the lockdown and how they felt safe.
The couple believes a Tuesday night open house will be “a big help” to get over the initial shock of just being at school but realizes the acclimation is “a work in progress.”
“It’s something you’ve got to do,” Prince said. “You’ve got to face it.”
She suggested parents validate a child’s fears, let them know they have every right to feel that way and “kind of turn it around.”
“We told our kids that besides home, school is the safest place,” Prince said. “Sometimes you do have bad things happen and it can happen anywhere, but especially because of what has happened, they’re even more safe than they (were) before because everyone’s alert, everyone’s paying attention to everyone.”
Maria Thomas said her 14-year-old daughter was home sick from school on Monday but after the family got over the initial shock of what had occurred, they met friends and their children at the Turning Point Church’s youth building and went out to a restaurant.
Over dinner, the 10 students got to vent their emotions following the shooting.
“The smaller ones were saying they were scared,” Thomas said. “Even the older ones, they were talking about the things that they had heard. They saw the gunshots, the kid standing up with the gun and shooting, seeing the kids fall, hearing the chaos, hearing the gunfire but not sure if it was actually that.”
After they expressed their terror, the children also discussed how thankful they were “that everyone was OK and was going to make it,” she said.
Thomas said she and other parents didn’t interject much, but instead “just let them talk” and let them know they were there for them.
She said it’s important to let children talk and vent and cry if they need to and that “all their reactions, all their emotions are normal.”
Still, a conversation or two — and even Tuesday’s open house — might not be enough to immediately get children to the point where they don’t need to look over their shoulder at school, she said.
“That may take some time,” she said. “I think some of them are going to take smaller … steps than others.”
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