What Happens When Protecting Our Kids Teaches Them to Never Protect Themselves?
I can understand their impulse, but kids need to develop self-
reliance. Sometimes that means being stern and making them find their own cover when a shooter opens fire in a public space.
Back when I was growing up, parents still believed in a crazy little thing called tough love. I might scream and holler and cry for help, but that didn’t mean my mom and dad charged to the rescue every time I procrastinated on a science project or forgot to bring my coat to school. It can be a challenge, taking shots from a powerful rifle, but it’s also an experience that builds character in young people, assuming they are able to recover from the blood loss.
Surely nothing is more impor-tant for children to learn than how to get back up after life knocks them down in a hail of gunfire.
Someday my kids will be adults. They’ll go off to college and get shot, they’ll join the workforce and get shot. I won’t be there to hold their hand through the many rounds of ammunition the world fires their way. If I crouch with them under a table every time a deranged gunman storms into Baskin-Robbins, I will have failed as a father. They’ll grow up expecting someone to step in and actually do something to stop them from being torn to pieces by an AR-15.
And we all know that’s never going to happen.
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