Schools, Youth and Violence: Where Do We Go From Here?
The Home
On the issue of the home, Peter Langman, expert on the psychology of school shooters, explained that preventive measures by schools and parents are important.
"The best way to prevent a shooting is for people to know the warning signs and report them and have a team in place within the school to investigate those threats," said Langman.
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Parents, Langman believes, can help by being "educated about the warning signs of school shooters" in the event that "either your children exhibit those warning signs or they come home talking about friends of theirs or kids at school, then the parents know what to look out for or how to take a comment seriously."
Daniel Huerta, vice president of the Parenting and Youth department at Focus on the Family and a licensed clinical social worker, noted the importance of domestic conversation between parents and children.
"In Christian homes I think we have to be really intentional about entering difficult conversations with our kids about what it means to be a Christian, what are the beliefs within our homes, why do we believe what we believe," explained Huerta.
"Those aren't threatening conversations. Those are very important. And really grappling with what it means to have a faith in something and then modeling that. Do I really live as if God is real?"
Craig Johnson, author and director of Ministries at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, stressed the point that broken homes have long been harming children.
"I think we begin not only by looking at current issues, but we've got to realize that there's a backstory because bottom line is, this didn't just happen. Kids have been dealing with stuff for a long time," Johnson said.
"Our world has changed so much, and we have to build strong foundations especially when kids are coming from single homes where the moms are trying their best and they're coming from broken situations and these kids are turning to different things."
