School shooter drills

[PigletForTwiglets]

I have a young teenager who has been properly traumatised by one of these "prepare for a school shooter" drills. They were not warned/told it was a drill (and nor were the parents). They genuinely thought they were going to die, and have essentially developed PTSD as a result. They have had to stop going to school (temporarily, I hope). Has anyone else had this happen? It seems to me to be somewhere between ridiculous and actively abusive. Have other kids found these things traumatic, too?
TIA

(just to clarify, we are in the UK)

Did the parent miss an email?

Both of mine have done lockdown drills but we had an email at the start of term to say they would happen. However, like fire alarms they have to be done realistically. Younger children are told it is practice for something like an out of control dog in the school grounds.

A local school did have to go into lockdown when an irate parent was brandishing a knife around outside.

My kids and their friends call them school shooter drills but the school call them lockdown drills. The examples that the school uses is extreme weather, dangerous dog on the loose, chemical spill, escaped prisoner (there is a prison within 5 miles) ...
Their school does it once a year.

Our school started lockdown drills around the time of the killer clowns craze. People with clown masks turned up at the school but nobody was hurt and no weapons were found.

Thanks @Comefromaway . Pretty confident I didn't miss an e-mail. It was meant to be "secret", to make it realistic. This does not sound sensible to me (do we practice best learning algebra by doing a really stressful exam?), and the fallout is really not good.

I've never heard of this happening and my DD has had them since Y1 due to being in close proximity to London bomb threats. She's in y10 now for context. It's not normally that dramatic. They're just told to close all windows and doors. Has your child been given access to too much news I wonder?

Thanks all.

Am I alone in thinking it's pretty bizarre to expose whole schools to exactly the kind of event which can trigger PTSD in kids? When there's an epidemic of teenaged anxiety anyway?

If, by "access to too much news" you mean that I allow them to look on the BBC website occasionally, then probably yes. Not sure what your definitions are.

Life can sometimes be quite traumatic. It can take time to recover from events that have caused emotional pain, but I'm not sure that's the same as PTSD, necessarily. Seems like we are too quick to pathologise negative but normal experiences and reactions. I saw someone die once, it took me a long time to get over the shock, does that make it PTSD?

How did the school make it stressful? I get the impression from my kids that it's as stressful as a fire drill. I grew up in a country that did earthquake drills at school and don't remember instructions like getting under a desk being stressful.

Why is a lockdown drill any worse than a fire drill?

We have a lockdown policy, that staff are familiar with, but we don't practice it.

It's interesting though becuase we do practice fire drills as if they were real, it's just that becuase of the familiarity everyone assumes it's a drill. Being in a real fire would be traumatic, but no one thinks a fire drill is traumatic, even though they don't know at the time that it's a drill. So maybe they need to be more frequent?

Ours were prepped the day before in tutor time. So didn’t know when it would happen , but were told about the three types of bells and what to do for each one. (Fire, ME, lockdown). And had time to ask questions.

Can’t believe yours had no prep at all, that’s very thoughtless of school. Have you asked them about it ?

Presumably because the kids thought there was a real shooter in the school? Sounds rather stressful to me?

I misread and thought your child was small. They're a teen. I can imagine the recent news making this worse esp if they weren't told it was a drill but tbh I think I'd just apply some tough love to this. Teens so often spiral and they need help getting out of it. What did the drill involve?
Also, my DD never got told if it was a drill or not, that sort of defeats the purpose. They never know if a fire drill is real or not, why would they tell them in this instance.

It must be the way your school did it. Do you know if it impacted other kids in the same way. I found about about these drills on here just a little while ago and mentioned it to my DD. She said they have had them but it didn't even register to tell us about them so it must have been handled quite differently. I don't think it was called active shooter though.

My question would be so your child the only one so adversely affected? If so I wouldn't assume it was the drill that has led to this. As others have said they are about as boring and mundane as a fire drill.

My children are in primary school and they do this yearly. No trauma. It's called a 'lockdown drill' here. Did the school actually say it was a shooter?

Did the school use the term school shooter drill? That's very unusual ime. Teenagers know about school shooters in the US because of social media and the news but they went to school after Dunblame so are you used to schools having doors that can't be opened without a pass etc

My kids schools do these. The younger ones are told it’s for escaped dogs etc. the older one knows the real reason because I want her to know when to run, when to hide and that the last resort is to fight. They’re routine for them.

My child's primary school does these.

I can't recall what they usually call it to the children, but once the kids were told someone's pet monkey had escaped (not weird, a house nearby has one!) so they had to do certain things. I only clocked onto what it really was when hearing the doors had been locked and the pupils hid under tables etc.

I think if it's really affected your dd that much there are more issues. An alarm in school that they have practiced before ( got to have or not allowed to do a realistic one) so close, lock doors window blinds etc shouldn't traumatise a teenager that much- school fights are worse than the noise of a drill! Any other issues for dd? Personally I wouldn't think ptsd as she's not been through anything traumatic, so avoiding school for another reason that she doesn't want to discuss with you?

What have school said? All her friends gone back to school? How are you encouring her to understand its not quite that dramatic and she has to get on with life?

Wondering why it triggered PTSD OP. Has she previously been in an active shooter situation or other life or death situation? If so I imagine she might have been in counselling - can you get done more sessions booked?

I am sure you realise why it’s important these things are practiced. All schools should be doing them so the staff and children know what to do.

Fire drills are done in much the same way - the children aren’t told it’s a drill until afterwards.

How are you helping your daughter? Are you talking her down and getting her to put things in perspective? It’s important to build resilience in out children rather than just looking to others to sort things.

Have you tried talking about the reasons it was done and comparing it to a fire drill?

I can pretty much guarantee that the term shooter drill came from the kids and not the teachers.

Lockdown drills happen in most schools. They aren't any different to fire drills. We do them In reception and explain after we are practicing staying in incase we can't go outside. You just need to help them get past this as they are common and necessary now unfortunately. It's the same as saying they're traumatised because they thought there was a fire and you weren't told a fire drill was happening.