Time to Focus on School Shootings' Most Important Narrative

As civil rights activist Frederick Douglass once said, "It is much easier to build healthy children than to fix broken adults."

As we are looking at another school shooting in America, our hearts are broken for the children of this nation. The shooting was at the Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville.

Additional details:

• The school teaches pre-school through sixth grade.
• Six people were killed, three children and three employees.
• The shooter was killed and identified as Audrey Hale, a trans-woman.

Covenant School is a private Christian school that housed kindergarten through sixth graders. The shooter entered through a side door with two AR’s and one handgun. In moments, law officials shot and killed the shooter and stopped further attacks.

And we know what the narrative always is.

We talk about our freedoms, new gun legislation, assault weapon bans, hardened schools with stricter single entries and metal detectors, arming our staff and teachers, and, of course, background checks for gun purchasing.

Listen, I’m here for the debate. And have been having that discussion for many years. For too long actually. I have actually visited and counseled in many of the school shooting settings. But there’s a few things we need to remember that must become more important in this ongoing debate.

What is most important right now, is not that we spend all of our time on programs like these. But to spend more of our time and resources on people. And, specifically, the home and the parent-child relationship.

Healthy families build healthy children who build healthy societies.

And so, if we do not spend time building healthy homes in America, then unhealthy homes will build unhealthy children who will build unhealthy societies.

I recently heard Jim McGovern, Democrat from Massachusetts, say: "It’s not about woke-ism in our schools and how Republicans think things like books and lessons and Tik-Tok pose a threat to our children, while six children and adults are dead at the hands of gun violence."

He goes on to say, "At some point we have to do more than offer our prayers, and instead take real action."

Well, let me tell you this, the only people who are telling us not to pray are people who have not experienced a life of prayer. It may be that prayer was the reason why we didn’t see more children murdered that day. We don’t know the stories and the miracles and the kind of things that happen in these moments that prayer effects.

And certainly, the power of prayer in the wake of these moments is a connection to God that brings solace and comfort in tragedy. Instead of denigrating prayer in moments of crisis, we should be celebrating prayer in moments of crisis.

So, let’s look at the most important narrative.

Let’s look at the home.

• 89% of American homes say that we should have family meals. But, Harvard told us that only 30% of families have dinner together once a week or less.
• One study said that Only 33% of families in America have dinner three times a week.
• Over the last 20 years there’s been a decline in family dinner by almost 40%.
• Maybe this is where it starts. Recognizing the need for family reform.

We need several focuses right now. Counseling services for the home, educational resources, tax credits, and para/NGO support, reform, and involvement.

Why is family such an important focus?

Look at some of the outcomes of family dinner.

Our children are less overweight, they are physically healthier, they have less emotional stress and problems, their academic success is higher, and their relational and parent-child interaction is much healthier.

Finally

What must become a new narrative is family emphasis. If we do not put our resources into the family right now, we fail Alpha Gen coming behind Gen Z.

We have failed by not placing healthy children in sectors of society as leaders. We have not placed healthy children as politicians, or educators, or businessmen and women, or influencers, or athletes, or entertainers.

It all begins in the home.

Because healthy families build healthy children who build healthy societies.