Triple Threat

Triple Threat parenting triplets in the Capital District

Desensitized to violence

With mass shootings happening more frequently, one mom worries about it hitting closer to home

Ihave been thinking a lot about recent events and gun violence. I keep thinking about how it makes me feel as a mom. Who can think about school, children and guns without going into a very dark place? I know the feeling of sending my children to school and hoping they have a good day. There have been times that I did not want to send them because I did not have faith they would come home in one piece. I have lost my faith in the systems that are supposed to keep children safe. For some reason, the violence feels never ending. Teachers and students are dying in a place that is supposed to be safe.

The first time I heard about a school shooting was the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. I was sitting in my favorite chair feeding my son who had been born 10 days earlier. I was watching my 2-year-old play with his big red Teletubby on the floor. My sons were only a handful of years away from starting school and at least a decade from high school. I watched and cried as the children on the screen ran from the building in absolute terror. I wept as I thought of the children who were never going home, never sleeping in their beds and never applying for college. Tears fell onto my son as he lay in my arms.

The thought of sending my children to school back then caused me a little anxiety. I was more preoccupied with the little things, like would the kids eat lunch or make friends. I didn’t worry that my children would be killed at school by a shooter with an automatic weapon. Elementary schools were safe! There was no reason to think that little kids would be targets. There was no reason to believe that there would be any more senseless violence in a school. As

by Jennifer

Steuer the mom of two little kids, I never thought there was going to be another school shooting … until there was one, then another and another. In 2006, just over a year after I married Harlan, a man entered an Amish school after

If often feels like we are watching helplessly as there seems to be no end to the increasing violence in our children’s schools.

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July 21: Family concert with Big Fez & the Surfmatics; Food truck and watermelon carving contest!

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