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String of Violence Has Shaped but Not Hardened Kids
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Suzanne Nixon, a therapist in Loudoun County, said she has been counseling parents to limit TV exposure regardless of their children's ages.
Michael and Stephanie Dwyer, 14-year-old twins from North Potomac, said they heard about the shootings on the radio, then read more online, where they later saw the photographs and video of Cho. They also had received and sent text-message chains expressing sympathy for the victims.
Even though the details of the massacre are grim, Michael and Stephanie said it is important to know what happened. "Kids should know about this stuff, because it makes us aware," Michael said.
Stephanie said that having read a lot of the accounts of Cho's mental problems, "we would see the warning signs now to prevent it from happening again."
Nancy Costa, an Oak Hill mother of two, recalled crying last week when she learned that both the killer and two of the slain students had attended her children's high school, Westfield in Chantilly. "I just feel so bad you have to go through this," she told her 15-year-old son.
She was surprised by his reply: that it was probably worse for her -- because his generation was more accustomed to tragedy.
Jennie Womble of Northern Virginia said that although her two children have asked questions, especially her 11-year-old son, she believes that they also know from experience that her assurances are reliable. "They've lived through these things before, and they come out okay," she said, "and so I think they understand that when I say they're going to be okay, they are going to be okay."
For those like Anne Bradshaw, a mother of three in Davidsonville with a student at Virginia Tech, the week's toll has been felt deeply and personally. The day it happened, she said, her 13-year-old son cried until he fell asleep. "He took it very hard," she said. "It's a real place to him -- his brother goes there. . . . His brother is his idol. . . . It was definitely closer to home for us in many ways than 9/11."
Bradshaw said one observation that has stayed with her was offered by her mother, who is 82. She told her, in a reflective time: "It's a scary time to be a child."
Staff writers Annie Gowen and Theresa Vargas contributed to this report.
