Through Little Girl Eyes: The reality of Colorado theatre shooting

Like many this morning, before getting ready to go to work I was scrolling down through Facebook when I saw a post mentioning breaking news of 14 killed at a Batman movie screening. Wondering what had happened I tuned in to the morning news to learn what was going on. In between trying to get ready for work and getting the kids ready to head to grandma’s house, my 7 year-old daughter became aware of what was happening on TV.

She started asking me what had happened, what was going on. She heard that children had been shot and that a 3-month old baby was among the victims. “Mamí, children died? Why did they shoot children? Did a baby die? Why would someone kill children?” As she is asking me all these questions, I myself am trying to process the information and make sense of it, as if that were even possible.

I confirmed to her that yes, the news was saying that people were shot and that some of them were in fact children. I told her that the news was saying that a baby was there too and that the baby might be hurt. As for why someone would do this… I answered that there are people that are not okay in the head (I might have straight out said ‘crazy’). I told her that sometimes people make bad decisions that hurt others. Then we arrived to grandma’s house and I had to leave for work.

Like every day, later in the day I called my mother-in-law to see how the kids were and I specifically asked about my daughter and whether she had mentioned anything about the shooting. That’s the first thing she mentioned when she arrived. This is early in the morning so my mother-in-law wasn’t aware. When there was breaking news cut-ins, my daughter asked “why was there a baby at the theatre?” “Maybe they didn’t have anybody to take care of him”, my mother-in-law answered. “Doesn’t the baby have a grandma that can take care of him?” “I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t”.

In retrospect, I should not have kept watching the news about the shooting while my daughter was present, especially since I wouldn’t be able to sit down with her and have a talk about what had happened. I’m glad that my mother-in-law was able to answer some of her questions and make her feel better. She was especially concerned about the baby –I imagine- because she has a 9 month-old baby sister at home.

My daughter, the eldest, is seven years old. And as much as I try to make her life -and those of my other two children- as happy and safe as possible, tragedies like these confirm the importance of speaking to them about how to protect themselves and what to do in case of an emergency. Of course, trying to do so according to their age and without scaring them.

Later on tonight, I’m going to ask my daughter how she feels and see if my 5 year old is aware of the situation. As for how I feel, well tonight we are going to the circus and you just got to hope that these types of occurrences are few and far between and that you are not one of the unfortunate people that turn up at the wrong place at the wrong time.