What Can Parents & Guardians Do
As a parent or guardian, these are research-based actions you can take today to help reduce risk and help create a safer environment for your child.
1. Practice firearm safety.
If you have firearms in your home, it is essential that they are safely stored and that your children have no access to them. Please review this resource on how to safely store firearms.
2. Be alert for potential red flags.
The adolescent mental health crisis has only been magnified due to COVID-19, with suicide attempts increasing during the pandemic. Suicide is preventable. Being alert for potential red flags and knowing the right questions to ask can make all the difference. Please also add the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to your phone contacts (800-273-8255) and encourage your children to do the same. Additional resources can be found here.
3. Be aware of signs of a potential crisis and report such concerns.
Suicides generally do not happen spontaneously, and school violence is often well planned out in advance. Likely signs of potential crisis come from knowing our own children, students, colleagues, and friends and recognizing signs of isolation, depression, anger towards others or the child’s school, and being alert to what may sound like an off-hand comment or dark social media post that could connect to violent intentions to oneself or others. Immediately report such concerns to a school administrator.
4. Talk to your child about the seriousness of threatening language/social media posts.
Bosque School takes any threats of violence within our community very seriously. In today’s climate, there is zero tolerance for any joking or latitude provided to any threats to community, or campus safety. We have a very comprehensive “Threats to Community or Campus Safety Protocol” outlined in our Student and Family Handbook. We never want our students to find themselves in very difficult and potentially life-changing situations due to something they thought of, at the time, as a funny comment or innocuous social media post. Talk directly with your child about never engaging in any threatening language or social media posts (just as we know to never make jokes about airport security in the TSA line), and talk to your child’s school about their protocols for threats to campus safety.
5. Educate yourself on your child’s school’s security and crisis management policies and procedures.
Bosque has a comprehensive Risk Management & Security FAQ document that includes answers to many commonly asked questions and provides additional risk and crisis management resources for parents and guardians.