I don’t know where the line is, but I think I would sooner pull my kids out to homeschool than have them be further traumatized/militarized by letting them participate in active shooter drills. It’s insane and will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you expose kids to this kind of lifestyle, the more it becomes... part of their lifestyle.

Yeah, that came to mind for me as well / seems like a pretty serious drawback to say the least.

Yeah, look how utterly ruined we were because we had nuclear bomb drills(!) and earthquake drills.

I know you were being sarcastic but you might be accidentally right. Have you seen the level of fear mongering in politics and a lack of regard for the future from the eras when they existed? I think the nuclear bomb drills may have really ruined them - that or the leaded gasoline.The 'I turned out just fine insistence' is often seen from people who support beating the pattern of abuse in beating their children.

I'm not trying to be a snide jackass here - I suspect it had real deleterious effects but they were normalized and went uncommented upon. The Black Death appeared to have some similar precedent as western culture became utterly desensitized to skeletons and 'the end is nigh' beliefs became a sizeable reoccurring minority to majority. I believe Rome had similar beliefs as some saw the writing on the wall of their decline. I'm not an expert but I wouldn't be surprised it died out in the dark ages as people were in the actual 'post apocalypse' and doing things like former Roman seamen founding Venice.

What, you don’t recall the rash of school earthquakings children did after those drills became commonplace? All the nuclear mail bombings?

Oh that’s right, people can’t cause earthquakes and nuclear bombs are a bit tricky to make. Whereas there are millions of guns circulating right now and even toddlers manage to off themselves with them at a nonzero rate.

I’m a gun supporting liberal, and I say something is wrong with our culture.

The answer isn't dependent on rate of death.

It's based on when we start teaching children to heal through trauma, as well as take responsibility for and learn to release their emotions.

These drills are simply trauma fuel. They're irresponsible actions taken by irresponsible, fear-driven adults who think they know what kids need when they themselves don't know how to be ok in an horrific situation or how to heal from it without developing toxic behaviors...

Toxic behaviors like the kind that traumatize children further.

The fact that you reach for those analogies should tell you that maybe these drills aren't exactly the best.

Nobody said they couldn't handle them. I said it's traumatizing.

And so were all the things you just mentioned.

I'm ready to be a part of the generation where we learned to heal, not merely handle. I wish that for my child, too.

When there aren't far more productive ways to spend that time. For instance, teaching and reinforcing the wearing of seatbelts, talking to kids about domestic abuse, or even just child gun safety like not picking them up and playing with them.

Makes sense. I suppose no need trying to quantify more specifically if we're nowhere near that line.

Schools do all that. Now what?