What Can We Learn from Sandy Hook?
|by Jan Hunt, M.Sc.
The U.S. has had 61 mass murders since 1982 - more than 19 times higher than other
first-world countries,1 and the pace is accelerating.
While there have been 31 such tragedies since the Columbine High School massacre in
1999, 16 of them occurred in 2012. But the most heart-wrenching of all of these was
the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, where we lost 20 of our precious
children, aged just 6 and 7.
While we will probably never know all the factors that led up to this tragedy, one
thing we do know is that the capacity to willingly inflict harm on others originates
in the first three years of life. We now know that an abusive childhood can create
lifelong genetic changes.2 This type of damage
directly affects the individual's stress response, increasing the risk of suicide and
homicide. Conversely, the capacities for trust, empathy, and affection are created
through compassionate nurturing in the earliest years.
What have we learned from Sandy Hook? Several things: We couldn't have designed a
better reminder to love our children and to tell them so, every single day, when it
could be our last chance. We couldn't have designed a better argument against guns
(Australia hasn't had one mass shooting since 1996, when strict gun control laws were
passed). And we couldn't have designed a better argument for increasing funding for
mental illness prevention and treatment, and for including compassionate parenting
skills in every school curriculum. Why is parenting, the most consequential job in the
world, with the potential to create lifelong emotional damage (and the one job that
most children will eventually have), completely overlooked in the school curriculum?
There is something wrong with our society's values that this crucial topic is almost
never addressed in the thousands of hours a child attends school. What a lost
opportunity. And we see the results in every newspaper headline.
What better argument for making meaningful and bold changes could there be than to
lose twenty of our precious, innocent children on one morning, so close to Christmas?
But who would design such an argument? Why was it necessary to have such a brutal
reminder? What can we learn?
|Can we learn to treat every child with the same respect we ask them to
give us? Can we remember how vulnerable they are? Can we learn the critical importance
of the early years for preparing them to become healthy, responsible adults, free from
emotional disorders? Can we help all parents to recognize their responsibility to
society, and give them tools for raising a compassionate child? Can we learn that
schools can help children to treat their peers with love and respect, by giving an
example in the way they treat their students? Can we create a school program that
values children's emotional needs above the need to learn the three Rs? Can we finally
recognize that compassionate parenting should be the most important subject in any
curriculum? Can we help children learn to respect others, not through threats and
punishment, but by being treated respectfully by adults?
|The answers to these questions are important, because every murderer,
whether by guns or any other means, was once a child who missed something critical in
their early years. We need to focus deeply on those years. We need to establish more
parenting classes so new parents can learn more supportive and respectful approaches
they themselves rarely or never experienced. We need to help parents recognize as
early as possible when they need help, and to make it easy for them to receive help
for a disturbed child, without social stigma. We need to help teachers recognize as
early as possible that a child is being mistreated by parents or peers. We need to
train teachers to handle such situations with compassion and expertise.
We need our schools to be safe - not just from guns, but from anything that can
lead to a life that lacks compassion. The capacity to love, respect, and trust others
starts in the earliest years. If we can put our focus on those years, we can give
children the best preparation for a life filled with such compassion and emotional
health that it would be impossible for them to choose to harm another human being. But
compassion is taught by example. What examples do our children have in so many homes
and schools? Are they treated with dignity, respect and connection, or are they
treated with criticism, threats, and punishment - none of which accomplish the
intended goals? Making such an enormous change in the way we treat our children will
surely take more than one generation, so we must start now. All of these changes will
take time, and we've run out of time. To have any meaning at all, Sandy Hook has to be
the tipping point that finally brings a new way of thinking about early childhood
Parents - and all those fortunate enough to have a child in their life - need to
recognize the critical importance of the earliest years, and the importance of
maintaining a loving and respectful atmosphere through compassion, not fear. This is
the only way we can make progress in the long term, so let's start now. In the
meantime, we need to write responsible and effective gun control. Let's not wait for a
larger massacre by someone even more disturbed.
Some say we shouldn't use this terrible event for political goals. Why not? What
better use can we give to this tragedy than to begin creating a safer and more loving
world for our children? Should it have no meaning at all?
"One generation of deeply loving parents would change the
of the next generation, and with that, the world."
- Charles Raison, M.D.,
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
Emory University School of Medicine
1 "Newtown, Connecticut Shooting: Timeline of Mass Killings Since
Columbine." Newsmax Media, December 2012.
2 "Allele-specific FKBP5 DNA demethylation: a molecular mediator of
gene-childhood trauma interactions." Nature Neuroscience, December 2012.
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