Thread by @SarahThyre

This afternoon, I received text alerts from my kids' school that they were on lockdown. I thought you might like to know what happens, from the perspective of my 12yo. I just picked her up from school and she was rattled and full of adrenalin.

"A robot voice came over the speakers telling us to get into our classrooms. The teachers pulled down the blinds and made us crowd into the far corner of the classroom. We were all so scared and lots of kids were crying. My BF and I were holding each other. I hugged a kid who

was really scared and crying really hard. We thought we were going to die. I said just in case we die, let's remember all our good times. My BF and I sang our favorite song to each other."

"What song was that?" I asked, holding back tears or sadness and rage.
12yo: "Come On Eileen."
Me: "Really?"
Her: "It's a private joke, mom."
Me: "OK"

I didn't want to turn the whole thing into a joke, so I asked her to describe it some more. When I picked her up, all the kids in the class were visibly shaken and giddy. They were still holding each other. I asked if they were given updates during the 45-minute ordeal.

12yo: "No, everything was really quiet bc they want it to seem like no one is there so the intruder goes away. We were all just crammed together for 45 minutes and then we heard helicopters overhead and we thought we were going to be bombed. THAT was even scarier.

We've done drills but we knew this was for real. We were all sure we were going to die, Mom. I'm so glad we didn't die."

A child's experience of a lockdown is one of terror. They don't know what's happening until it's over. Plenty of people see this as "the price of freedom." It's appalling that we do this to kids.

One more thing the 12yo said? "There was one spot where the blinds weren't down all the way and we kept staring at it expecting some man's face to look in and see us and come in and kill us. We couldn't stop staring at that window."
Horror in real life.