What Parents Can Do When Their Child Is in an Active-Shooter Lockdown

This moment will come for too many of us.

The text, from a fellow ER doctor and former Brown University faculty member, arrived at 4:27 p.m. on Saturday: “Active shooter near Brown engineering building? Is Hannah ok?” Within seconds, I looked on my phone for my daughter’s location—she was on campus in Friedman Hall. I texted her. It was real. There was an active shooter. She was hiding in a bathroom with her four best friends. For the next 24 hours, I lived every parent’s nightmare while learning hard lessons about a reality even I was not trained for.

As an emergency medicine physician with over 20 years of experience, I’ve operated from positions of information and authority in mass casualties before. This weekend, I had neither. I was simply a mother trying to keep my daughter safe from 150 miles away, armed only with a phone and whatever guidance I could piece together. I want to share what I learned, because on Saturday, thousands of students were in lockdown texting their anxious parents, and I realized how unprepared we are for this side of the experience.

Photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash

We Need to Prepare Ourselves

Unfortunate but true: Our children have all received active shooter training. They know to run, hide, or fight. My daughter and her friends did everything right. They’d been walking back from decorating a dorm room for a birthday celebration when the alert came through. They knew to get inside immediately, secure a windowless bathroom, stay silent, and listen for footsteps.

But we parents? We were fumbling in the dark, fielding frantic texts from friends and family while trying to gather accurate information for our terrified children. It’s time we acknowledged this gap and addressed it.

Practical Steps That Made a Difference For Us

Enable location sharing with your kids.

Before reaching out to Hannah, I checked her location. I knew she was inside, on campus, and likely staying silent. I also knew she was not safe. I learned to text rather than call and be ready for her to be scared and ask questions.

Become an accurate information filter as best as you can.

I knew her phone was exploding with group chats and suspicion. Some of the information in messages she was getting weren’t true, and I needed to help her figure that out. If there were additional shots, could I corroborate that? I told her to wait, stay silent, let me figure out what she needed to do, instead of running her battery down trying to figure out what was true or just a rumor—sharing rumors and unverified reports. I turned on the TV and got on every reliable social channel I could. I answered whatever questions I could honestly and told her when things were just not clear. I also reminded her to breathe—and then reminded myself.

Manage your own communications.

When word spread, my phone lit up with concerned messages. Each notification pulled my attention from what mattered: keeping my daughter informed and calm. If someone you know has a child at risk, send your support, but don’t expect a response. You can also wait to text. Sending a note the next day is often a better way to offer support and won’t likely get missed amid a slew of parent chats and school notifications.

Get close if you can, but do not try to go on campus.

Ninety minutes in, I got in my car and drove to Providence. I realized that if the shooter wasn’t apprehended quickly, the students might be locked down for hours. I also knew how few of them had parents nearby, and because we lived less than three hours away, I knew I could serve as a proxy parent for many of my daughters’ friends. Very importantly, when I got to Brown, I didn’t go near campus; I did not want to contribute to the chaos, and the situation was being managed by professionals on the ground. I just needed to be nearby to get my kid and her friends when they were released. Just after midnight Hannah called to tell me I could get them from the gym. I was on site within five minutes.

What Reunification Looked Like

Reunification centers during mass casualties can be horrifically sad and sometimes chaotic places. Family members arrive, looking for loved ones, unsure whether they are injured or safe, often showing pictures and trying to help with identification. That was not the case on late Saturday night. The parents at that center knew the kids we were picking up were ok. The reunification center at Brown was remarkably organized and calm. The volunteer staff and administration were set up to track and facilitate as many students connecting as many parents as quickly as possible. As parents, we just needed to stay calm and let the system work. And it did. I arrived, identified myself, and left an hour later with a cold pizza and a car full of hungry and tired but safe young adults.

The Aftermath

Many of our kids are home now. There are still many questions and very few answers. My daughter has asked me about ballistics and injury patterns and realized that if this shooter had an automatic rifle instead of a handgun, more of her friends would have died. That realization, one we emergency physicians have known for years, has penetrated her cortex in a way only lived experience can. It breaks my heart to see my daughter go through this, and she is just one kid from one campus in a country that has seen almost 400 mass shootings this year. Things have to change.

The Hard Truth

As parents, we need to accept two realities: First, this is happening to our children. If your child hasn’t been touched by this, at the rate we are going, they certainly will be. Second, when it does, they’ll often have better tactical information than we will: they’ll know where to go, where to hide, when to run. Our job isn’t to direct their movements but to be their anchor of accurate information, their calm in the chaos, and their safety net when it’s over.

We cannot change the world our children are navigating overnight. But we can prepare ourselves to support them through moments like these, because, as much as we wish otherwise, that moment will come for many of us.

Dara Kass is an emergency medicine physician and parent of a Brown University student.

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