The Shootings in Chardon

At this point, we don’t know a lot of facts about the kid who killed a student at Chardon High School this morning and shot four other teens. I have patients who were in the school this morning and two clinicians in our practice also work with agencies involved in the crisis response. Prayers for everyone involved…the family of the boy who was killed, the kids who were wounded and their families, kids and faculty in the school exposed to a trauma-inducing situation, the police, emergency responders and counselors on the scene would be very helpful.

Without knowing more about factors that led to this incident, here are a few thoughts about a situation that doesn’t make any sense.

The level of cruelty that kids heap upon one another has increased exponentially in the time I’ve been in practice.

I wish I could say “church kids” are notably kinder than their peers, but I can’t.

Families are experiencing more distress than I’ve ever seen in 25 years of practice.

We as parents are doing a very poor job of raising kids whose actions reflect the values we profess to hold and demonstrate the resilience to navigate a hostile culture.

I’ll probably have more to say about this last point later…but I think we as parents are going to have to take the lead in changing the culture because we can’t count on our politicians, our schools or our church leaders to do it for us.