Experts say that children who survive school shootings deal with a host of complex feelings. Photo / Getty Images
They were, by some measures, the lucky ones.
The children who were rushed to the hospital, bloody and scared. The ones who clutched their parents in emotional reunions that circulated on the news.
They were the latest survivors of the latest school shooting, which killed two children, ages 8 and 10, in Minneapolis on Thursday.
Now the children of Annunciation Catholic School join a group that numbers nearly 400,000: America’s children who have been exposed to gun violence at school.
As Natalie Barden, the sister of 7-year-old Daniel Barden, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, put it in a letter to future survivors of school shootings: “You are now part of this sad little club that is actually not so little anymore”.
More than 397,000 children have experienced gun violence at school since the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, according to data collected by the Washington Post.
That number now includes the students who hid under pews when a shooter fired through the windows of Annunciation Catholic Church during an all-school Mass.
In addition to the two children who were killed, 17 people were injured, 14 of them children.
Experts say that children who survive school shootings deal with a host of complex feelings, ranging from anxiety and grief to guilt and shame.
A common question they ask is “Why them and not me? Why me and not them?” said Robin Gurwitch, a clinical psychologist who specialises in the impact of trauma and violence on children.
Violence that happens in a place that is supposed to be safe, such as a school or a church, is especially hard to process.
“It basically violates the social contract that I had with the world: I expected to be able to go to school and come home,” Gurwitch said.
When that doesn’t happen, she said, a child’s “worldview can be altered”.
Annunciation has about 390 students in preschool through to primary and intermediate, according to public data.
Many of them would have attended the beginning of the year Mass that is customary for Catholic schools, making for many survivors and witnesses.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, citing the account of her former staff member’s child, said one girl had “watched a child get shot in the stomach and another in the neck”.
Norris Roberts, said his step-grandson, Endre Gunter, was injured in the shooting. He had surgery and is no longer in critical condition, but Roberts is worried for the boy’s future.
Endre witnessed another child die, Roberts said. “It’s going to be tough on him,” he said, wondering aloud whether Endre would struggle for the rest of his life.
“I can’t fathom that happened and you being stable,” he said, adding: “It’s not normal”.
Survivors of other school shootings have described how the trauma has followed them for years: panic attacks, migraines, a mental plan for how to escape any public space.
Research from Stanford University and other institutions has similarly found long-lasting effects, including increased absences from school, lower student achievement and even lower earnings in adulthood.
Students in neighbourhoods where school shootings occur show increased antidepressant usage for “two to three, even up to five years later”, said Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor of health policy at Stanford who has studied the effects of school shootings.
Still, experts said, children can overcome traumatic experiences with the right support.
Initial struggles are to be expected.
If a child is still experiencing anxiety, trouble focusing, irritability and other problems a month after a traumatic event, those may be signs that the child needs more support, Gurwitch said.
She said all parents – not just those living in the Minneapolis area – should talk to their children about school shootings, particularly after an event makes the news.
Even children in preschool and kindergarten are more aware than many parents think. “To assume that children won’t know is a hope and a prayer that is not realistic,” Gurwitch said.
She said parents could start by asking what children already knew, validating how their children feel and focusing on what steps were being taken to keep them safe.
“We can never say, ‘I promise it’s not going to happen at your school,’” she said. “We can say, ‘We are doing everything we know how to do to keep you safe.’”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Sarah Mervosh
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