What would your plan be if your child lived and wasn't shot?

[SheilaT]

1. A lot would depend on just how old my child would be.

I know I'd hold the child very close to me a lot in the next few days or even weeks. I'd talk to him (I have two grown sons, so I'll use that as my default) and try to explain in terms I think he'd understand.

But in reality, I have no idea what I'd really do.

When 9/11 happened my older son was away in college, on the west coast. The younger son was a freshman in high school in the midwest. I was not sure, when I picked him up from school that day, if he'd have heard what had happened. I was thinking back to the many years ago when I was in high school and there were no TVs. But his school did have TVs, and they learned what happened as quickly as anyone. But he was in high school, not early elementary, and we were over a thousand miles away from what happened in NYC and DC and Pennsylvania.

I am not sure you can ever really explain this kind of thing to a young child.