I used to experience the occasional horrible events of terrorism and gun violence without a strong personal reaction of fear.  After September 11, 2001, I was greatly saddened, I was worried about the potential for war, and I had some immediate concern about whether or not Houston, where I was living, would be a target if there were still attacks to come.  I felt concern for the Muslim community in Houston where I was living and in my hometown area of Detroit.  But I didn't hesitate to fly on a plane when the opportunity next arose.  I responded by hosting events on Islam at our church.  I didn't experience fear at a visceral level, just sadness, as I recall.  I didn't experience fear after the Oklahoma City bombing, either.  With school shootings, I didn't experience fear after Columbine or Virginia Tech or any of the school shootings in between.

After Sandy Hook, I heard a lot of people talking about fear, and a lot of people talking about how this doesn't increase their fear, and wouldn't change how they would do anything.  But the experience is different for me as a parent when we have events that include children at or close to my own child's age. 

• I felt fear when nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green was killed while meeting with her member of congress, Gabrielle Giffords, on a street corner in 2011.  Christina-Taylor Green seemed so much like my own daughter, precocious and big-eyed.  I've paused and thought of her and experienced fear every single time I've taken my own daughter to a political protest or meeting with her congress member or any elected official since.  
• I felt fear during and after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary.  My child is a little older than the first-grade students who were killed, but it was a very short time ago that she was in first grade, and she's still in elementary school.  Sandy Hook could have been her school, and was like her school and every elementary school in so many ways.  
• And I felt fear after the Boston Marathon this week.  I've never attended the Boston Marathon, but I know many people who have, and one who was there.  And like 8-year-old Martin Richard killed this week by one of the explosions, my child has been in crowded community settings that could just as easily be a target for someone with a home-made bomb.  Martin Richard looks like my daughter's classmates, as we see the pictures of him holding a sign wishing for peace. 

Many parents, like myself, experience these deaths of young children in a different way than we've experienced the violent episodes of our country's history in the past.  We can see in these children our own children. Some affect us more, some less.  My child is much younger than Trayvon Martin when he walked back from the store, or Hadiya Pendleton standing in a park in Chicago, but with each child shot, my parent-brain sorts out: how much was this situation like one my child could be in?  I've felt no fear about movie theaters, even after the Aurora, Colorado shooting, even though a six-year-old girl was killed there.  Why didn't it affect me the same way?  I can't say.  But after Sandy Hook, it was a real struggle to let my child go back to school on the next school day.  I waited anxiously for her to get home for the entire day.  If there had been any threats of violence in my own community, I don't know that I would've been able to send her off at all. 

We know that statistically the odds of being in a school shooting, or other mass shooting, are very small, as are the odds of being in a bombing.  But we also know that these events struck unlikely and every-day sorts of places, and it could happen anywhere just as easily.  The statistics protect our hearts, but the randomness lets the fear back in.  All these children were doing ordinary things, things that should have been risk-free: going to school, attending a marathon, talking on a street corner.

We respond in different ways to this fear.  After Sandy Hook I heard parents talking about how they talked to their own children about the shootings, and heard other parents saying they were trying to shield their children from the news entirely.  And I heard parents speaking with great emotion on both sides.  With our hearts in our throats, it's hard to remain calm and non-judgmental, particularly if it feels like somebody is questioning our decisions about our children.  We're in "mama bear" mode, protecting our children the best we know how.  And we can be, and some were, somewhat cruel to each other: "This is why I would never send my child to public school," "Anyone who keeps their child home is a coward," "You must talk to your child about this to help them cope," "If anyone talks to my child about this, I'll be furious at them."  After Sandy Hook, and in the wakes of school threats since, we make the tough decisions: Do we send our child to school, even though there are threats?  Do we keep our child home, and being labeled a coward?  Do we talk to our child, possibly increasing his or her fear?  Do we shield our child, risking that our child will find out in a scary way?  Do we take our child to high-profile events where things are more likely to happen?  Do we keep our child home? 

Not all parents feel fear in the same way.  And not all parents will have reactions to the same kind of events.  It's not rational or logical, this fear.  But just because it's not rational or logical, doesn't mean that it can be or even should be completely ignored. We're quick to say, "You can't let the fear affect you."  We're quick to tell parents and all people that if we give in to fear, we're letting the terrorists win. 

It is not the parents' reactions that is the problem here.  Attacking each others' responses to this situation is misplacing our anger, our fear, our blame for this culture of violence. 

For the parents out there, if you're feeling fear, that's okay and understandable.  If you're not, that's okay and understandable, too.  And whatever your reaction here to these insane circumstances, if you're doing what you think is best for your child, then I support your decision.  Send your child to school.  Keep your child home a day or two.  Home school your child.  It's not your decision that's broken or wrong or crazy, whatever it is: it's this culture where children are killed in ways like these. 

My heart still breaks for Christina-Taylor Green, and it breaks anew for Martin Richard.  No child's life should be taken in such a way as these.  No child should be the victim of violence.  We shouldn't have to worry about our children at the marathon, or at school, or on a street corner, or walking down the street, or standing in a park.

When I was a child, we never had drills of what to do if a shooter entered the school.  Our biggest fear was nuclear holocaust, and there were no drills, because we were told that we'd all just die pretty quickly, since we were so near the large city of Detroit.  It was a different sort of fear we grew up with then.  It was scary, but not something we dealt with on a regular basis, and wasn't talked about at all until junior high.  In elementary school the scariest thing was fire drills.  Today, my child has regular lock-down drills, and it's a normal part of elementary school life. 

Childhood is different now, and parenting is different now.  And there are a whole lot of different and acceptable responses to these circumstances.  So parents, be gentle with one another.  And non-parents, be gentle with us.  This is new, and we're just trying to do what's best for our children.  Trust us to be the ones who know what that is, even if you would do things differently.

I took my daughter to see Brave this week, and really loved it.  As I reflected on what I loved so much, I realized that this was almost the first "princess movie" I had seen with a positive (and living) mother figure.  The movie is the first animated movie I've seen with my daughter which is really a mother/daughter movie.  There are good father/son movies - Up! is an example of a father-stand-in and boy movie.  How to Train Your Dragon and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs both figure heroes who have strained relationships with fathers who don't understand them which get resolved through the events of the movie.  If you look to animal characters, you quickly see a strong father/son relationship in The Lion King and Finding Nemo.  But stories that tell about mother/daughter relationships are exceedingly rare in the animated film category.  First of all, as has been pointed out, this is Pixar's first animated film with a female star.  But there are plenty of Disney princesses, right?  However, if you think about it, the average movie princess has a mother who is dead and a step-mother who is evil..  It's the staple of Grimms' fairy tales, and nothing new.  But even while the Disney movies change up the Grimm Brothers' tales in many ways, they don't, by and large, introduce princesses with wonderful and living mothers.  Here's the list of Disney Princesses (including some that they don't always list):

Princess (Movie) - mother status
Cinderella - Dead, evil step-mother.
Snow White - Dead, evil step-mother.
Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) - Honestly, I can't remember.  Probably alive, but asleep the whole time?
Ariel (The Little Mermaid) - Presumed dead.  I don't think she's ever mentioned.
Jasmine (Aladdin) - Presumed dead.  Again, I think she's not mentioned.
Tiana (The Princess and the Frog) - ALIVE, and a positive figure, but not in most of the movie, as, well, she spends most of her time as a frog.
Pocahontas - Presumed dead.
Belle (Beauty and the Beast) - Dead.
Rapunzel (Tangled) - Mother alive, but Rapunzel abducted and raised by evil witch.
Mulan - Mother alive, but Mulan is away for most of the movie.

As you can see, only one of these princesses was raised by a loving mother who is still alive when the movie's storyline takes place, unless you count Sleeping Beauty.  And, again, aren't they all asleep for the most part?  And the two movies where we really see the loving and caring mother, the girls are away from their family setting for most of the movie. Tiana in The Princess and the Frog spends most of the time removed from her family setting and wandering as, well, a frog.  Mulan bravely goes off to war, and has some strong feminist elements, but her primary relationship even when she's with her family seems to be with her father.  My husband loves Mulan, because he sees it as a father/daughter relationship movie, so I don't think I'm exaggerating this.

And while a lot of the fathers are dead, too, in princess movies, we do have strong father/daughter relationships with Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Belle, and Mulan.  Not all of these daughters are removed from their father's care through the whole movie, notably Jasmine and Pocahontas.

For bad examples of mother/daughter relationships, Disney's Tangled really takes the prize.  Here we have a daughter raised by a woman/witch who keeps her locked in the tower and apparently just wanted her because the girl's magic hair keeps the witch young.  The mother/witch figure is truly disturbing here, because it is portrayed as a twisted version of real affection.  Whereas the evil stepmothers in Snow White and Cinderella are just flat-out mean and nasty, the witch in Tangled is not directly so for most of the film. 

Brave is so very different in that it tells the story of a girl asserting her independence and developing her own identity, but it does so while having her deal with a loving, caring, and living mother.  And, even more unusual, the heart of the story is really about the relationship between Merida, the daughter, and Elinor, her mother.  They want different things for Merida's life, and the tension develops from this.  They love each other, but they don't understand each other, and they don't know how to communicate and regain the closeness they had when Merida was younger.  In one heart-breaking moment, they each, in anger, destroy an object that is precious to the other.  Elinor realizes immediately what she has done; Merida takes much of the movie to understand what she needs to do to repair things, literally and figuratively. 

We need more of this sort of movie--stories that tell of girls developing their identity and individuality--and we need more with mothers who aren't dead or evil who are a part of these girls lives.  So while there's much to critique in this movie, my bottom line is thankfulness.  I think this is a story that will stand up as my own daughter reaches those ages where she needs to pull away more from mom.  It will be something that I can refer back to as a metaphor for our real lives.