[blparent] Lockdown Drill at School

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Okay, bear with me, because this does have to do with blind parenting, and we’ll come to that, but it doesn’t start out that way.  Sometimes things get really compicated, and my questions are one, is there anything I’m missing that I can do to reassure my daughter that I haven’t thought of?  And two, am I right to keep the school counselor out of this, or am I paranoid?  I admit I am, a little.  My feeling is, once the psychologist gets involved, an issue is made where there wasn’t one, and it’s really hard to get rid of the professionals once they’re sniffing around.  And once someone hints that blindness might be part of the problem, which I don’t think it is at all, then you’ve got red flags where they don’t need to be.

My daughter was already a bit hesitant about going back to school after Christmas Break.  Vacation was long, and she was starting in with the “I’ll miss you too much” stuff.  I don’t know why; she likes school and has friends, so I figured she’d pop back into the routine and do fine.  I let her wear an inexpensive necklace of mine so she’d have a tangible connection to me all day and sent her off Tuesday morning with lots of hugs.  Well then—and I think this was poor timing on the part of the school, but that’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth—the school held a lockdown drill Tuesday morning.  I didn’t know it at the time.  I think parents should be given a heads-up by automatic phone dialer or e-mail if there’s been a lockdown drill in case their kids have issues, but whatever.  The only thing that happened Tuesday night was that my daughter mentioned yet again that she thought she should be home schooled.  She’d been seeing commercials for K-12 Online, a home school academy you can do on the computer.  I dismissed the idea casually, saying it wouldn’t be a good fit for our family and that she needed to learn at school with her friends, and she went to bed without incident.

Wednesday morning, out of nowhere, she had the queen mother of all tantrums, refusing to go to school at all.  Kicking, screaming, ripping her clothes off, insisting she was sick.  Her dad tried holding her down and putting her shoes on by sheer force.  I stopped that because I was afraid either he would break her ankle or she would kick him in the face and smash his glasses.  So I made him leave her in her room and shut the door till she calmed down.  I told her if she was too sick to go to school, she could go back to bed.  That was what sick people did, sleep.  No friends, no toys, no TV, no electronics, nothing.  She didn’t like that idea, so she got dressed and went to school.  We took TV away that night because of the tantrum and because she was late for school that day.  I felt bad later because I didn’t know the motives behind any of it, but she hadn’t opened up to me.

Well, about eleven o’clock, her teacher called me, not very happy.  She told me my daughter had been to the health aide—there are no RN’s in schools now, they’re health aides—three times with a headache and a tummyache.  No temperature.  Neither the teacher nor the health aide believed my daughter was sick.  The teacher said she was over it; she had 25 other kids to deal with, it was my turn.  So I got my daughter on the phone and said she could either listen to her teacher and do her schoolwork or come home and go to bed.  I wouldn’t get into the “I’m really sick, Mom” discussion with her.  I told her no more trips to the health aide.  Either stay at school and do her work or Dad would bring her home and she could go to bed.

Thursday, two more trips to the health aide.  That night, my daughter and I started talking about what was going on.  And she told me the school had done a lockdown drill on Tuesday.  In her words, the office lady had come on the loudspeaker and said they were going to pretend a man with a gun had run out of the bank and was coming toward the school.  So everybody was going to crawl under desks and tables till the teachers said it was okay to come out.  (I found out later that nobody came on the intercom and said anything about a gun.  That was either filled in by my daughter’s imagination or by what the other kids were saying.  Kids aren’t stupid.  The office person said it was a lockdown drill, the teacher said a drill might happen if there were trouble at the bank or in the neighborhood, kids aren’t stupid.  They know what that means.  Nobody crawled under desks, which aren’t bulletproof; they stood along a cinderblock wall lined with cupboards with no windows, which might be somewhat better I guess.)

Anyway, my daughter—bless her heart—wasn’t freaked out for herself.  She thinks she’s one of the Power Puff Girls or Raven from Teen Titans, so she figures she’ll kick butt and take names wherever she is.  She started thinking about me, here alone.  She started worrying about how old and feeble my guide dog Ballad is getting and what I would do if the man with the gun ran to the house.  So by Tuesday night after the lockdown drill, she didn’t tell me why, but she thought she should be home schooled so she could stay with me and be her superhero self.  And by Wednesday morning, she decided she wasn’t going to school.  When we made her go, she tried to get herself sent home sick.

So I reassured her as best I could.  I showed her how the dead bolt worked and how far it went into the wall, how the door won’t budge an inch when it’s locked.  I made her a pinky promise deal that I’ll lock the door every day, and that when she leaves with her dad in the morning, she can check it herself.  I sent her outside to ring the doorbell so she can hear how loud the dog’s bark is from out there.  I reminded her how fast the firemen got here once when we had to call 911 because the neighbor’s smoke alarm was going off and he wasn’t home.  I said if a man with a gun was running around and I called 911 and told the police, they’d be here that fast.  Is there anything I’m missing as far as reassurances go?

So anyway, here’s where the blind parenting part comes in, if you’ve stuck with me this long, and thanks for still reading.  I called my daughter’s teacher to explain all of this because I wanted to let her know what effects the lockdown drill had—and to find out exactly how it had happened because I didn’t quite believe the kid version of the story.  I also wanted to explain why my daughter had been pretending to be sick so much.  The teacher is great.  She understood.  But the health aide suggested maybe I should have my daughter talk to the school counselor because she said she thought my daughter felt overly responsible for me, and that’s not healthy.  She said a daughter shouldn’t feel she has to take care of her mother; a mother should be taking care of her child.  I told her I do take care of my child.  I said I don’t think we’re talking about an unhealthy relationship here.  We’re talking about a little superhero who thinks she’s going to save the day.  There’s a big difference. I don’t believe the health aide would have come to the same conclusion if I’d been a sighted mom.  So far I believe I’ve held her off, and I’m hoping the problem resolves itself before her worries go any further.  If my daughter gets sent there with false symptoms again, I asked the health aide to reassure her that I’m safe and that she checked the lock with her dad in the morning, instead of focusing on the fact that she isn’t sick, which isn’t the real issue.

I hate these lockdown drills.  I suppose we’re stuck with them in the world we live in, and hopefully most kids aren’t having the reaction my daughter is.  But we’re stealing the innocence from a whole generation of kids, and truthfully, I’m not sure the drills would have prevented any of the tragedies at Columbine.  I don’t know, it’s said they did help at New Town, where kids knew what to do and moved quickly into position; I just hate that kids have to be burdened with this crap!

Thanks for sticking with me; it’s been a hell of a week!
Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.