Run to the bathroom and lock the door or throw his or her body into a punch as gunshots ring out?
What have you told your kid to do if a gunman bent on murder comes into his or her school, movie theater, office, church…?
Dr. Benjamin Spock’s “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” does not have a chapter on what to tell your kid about mass shooters.
A new edition is required.
According to news reports, Kendrick Castillo’s father told him not to be a hero.
“You don’t have to be the hero,” John Castillo told NBC News he told his son.
With three days left in the school, the 18-year-old senior at STEM School Highlands Ranch in suburban Denver joined two classmates in rushing a shooter.
His classmates were saved, but like 21-year-old Riley Howell at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 60-year-old Lori Gilbert Kaye at the Chabad of Poway near San Diego and far too many others in recent years, the would-be electrical engineer is dead.
Kendrick is the hero his dad didn’t want him to be.
He’s the hero he should never have had to be.
John Castillo’s kid took a bullet that should not have been fired.
No graduation for Kendrick.
No freshman year in college.
No talking to his own kids about flight or fight or even freeze.
“‘You raised me this way. You raised me to be a good person. That’s what I’m doing,’” John Castillo told NBC his son told him long before the shooting.
Kendrick’s parents should be proud of him.
They did raise him the right way.
He was a good person.
By doing what he did, Kendrick and his classmates protected kids — something adults in positions of power seem far too reluctant to do when it comes to guns.
But boy, what if Kendrick were your kid and not John’s?
Let’s be real. Your kid could be placed in the same situation.
What do you want your child to do?
You’ve raised your kid to be a good person.
You expect that kid — no matter how old they are now — to do the right thing.
What is the right thing?
Faced with a gunman, would you rather your kid do nothing and maybe, just maybe stay alive or would you rather your kid jump into the shark tank and maybe, just maybe come out alive?
Neither is a good choice.
Neither is a decision someone’s kid — be they 60 or 18 — should have to make.
Both options are unacceptable.
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