Viral Photo Sparks Debate On Young Children Practicing Gun Drills In School
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)-- The internet is buzzing after a mother captured a photo of her little girl seemingly being goofy, only to realize she was actually practicing a security drill she learned in school.
Schools across the country hold drills for dangerous intruders, but is there a point when all this preparation becomes to much for children to deal with?
CBS2's Elise Finch talked to the experts. The photo sparking controversy shows the 3-year-old girl standing on the toilet at home, which at first glance was innocent and even amusing to her mother.
"I took the picture initially because I thought it was adorable until I realized that she was practicing for a shooter drill. Then I was totally taken aback," mother Stacey Feeley told CNN. "This is the society they're growing up in."
The picture went viral and is shocking people across the country, even New Yorkers.
"What! That's what they're teaching kids now? It's like that?" one woman said.
"While it's sad to look at it's an unfortunate circumstance of our times," Long Island City resident Chris Reardon said.
Deadly school shootings in Littleton, Colorado; Newtown, Connecticut and other places -- going back many years before the little girl was born -- have made lockdown drills as common as fire drills these days. Students at Palisade Preparatory High School in Yonkers said they're helpful.
"It makes me feel safer than not knowing what to do," senior Doris Austin Brooks said.
People CBS2 spoke to agreed that children need to be prepared, but they disagreed on what age the child should be when that preparation begins.
"I don't think you're too young at any age, at this point with what's going on in the world," Long Island City resident Stephanie Reardon said.
Dr. Harris Stratyner, a professor of psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said he believes children need to be old enough to really understand that the drills they participate in do not mean that they are or will be in danger.
But they also need to know that it's not a video game. While every child is different, he said most children aren't able to grasp that concept until they're in first grade around five or six years old.
"Pre-schoolers often times don't have the ability to understand more complex, abstract kinds of things," Stratyner said. "You can start to see kids have panic attacks in an extreme sense, you can start to see kids have some sort of trauma."
Residents in the area were split on just how young is too young. Some say young children may not grasp the full concept, but it's better for them to be prepared than to potentially lose their life.
Stratyner said whenever parents choose to prepare their children for school safety, they need to make sure they also explain that school violence is the exception, not the norm.
