How parents can encourage kids to report threats at school
But almost none of the fellow teens who saw those communications disclosed them, articles in The Washington Post and New York Times reported. “Kids joke around like that,” a girl who saw the gunman make threats on a platform called Yubo told The Washington Post.
Neither of these situations is unusual, according to the U.S. Secret Service, which, through its National Threat Assessment Center, has studied how to avert school violence for more than 20 years. A 2019 Secret Service examination of 41 incidents of school violence found that 83 percent of the attackers had made verbal, written, visual or video communications about their plans — a behavior known as “leakage.” In many of those cases, the report said, the people who observed the threatening communications did not act.
The reasons students can fail to share such information is varied, experts said. Rationales include being reluctant to “snitch,” dismissing a threat because it isn’t specific or because the teen isn’t sure the other person is serious, being afraid for their own safety or being inured to violence they see online.
Early intervention, however, is the cornerstone of the behavioral threat assessment strategy for schools that the Secret Service developed in 2018, and the agency says students are best positioned to identify and report concerning behaviors by their peers. NTAC Chief Lina Alathari said the Secret Service encourages schools “to make sure that they are empowering students to come forward with information not just about specific threats, but also about some of the behaviors that we see in the backgrounds of student attackers.” These can include bullying, self-harm, depression, suicidality, and increased interest in previous attacks and mass shooters.
Alathari said parents can play a role by discussing troubling communications and behaviors with their kids. We talked to her and several psychologists about how parents can approach these conversations.
One way parents can try to get past the teenage code of silence is by emphasizing that safety issues, such as violence or suicide, “absolutely need to be reported,” said Courtenay McCarthy, a school psychologist on the Safety and Support Response Team for Oregon’s Salem-Keizer Public School District. The district has established a threat assessment system adopted by school districts across the country.
“We know that kids are not going to report everything,” McCarthy said. “They are probably not going to report about their friends using drugs. But we can help them understand that when these are life and death issues, they do need to report.”
It’s also important that parents make it clear that their child does not need to report the information to them. “Some children are very comfortable talking to their parents about all of these issues, and some aren’t. So I really think that parents just need to get the message to their kids that an adult needs to know,” McCarthy said.
Carrie James, a senior research associate at Harvard’s Project Zero, which studies issues related to education, suggested that parents help children identify two to three trusted adults they might turn to — such as a teacher, a coach, a counselor — even if the parent is not on that list.
Many states, such as Oregon, have anonymous tip lines. It can be more helpful, however, if kids are willing to come forward, McCarthy said: “We tend to get better information when we can ask questions about the situation and refer back if we have more questions.” She added that her team engages in “creative problem-solving” to maintain the anonymity of teens who make reports.
Alathari said the Secret Service recommends that school districts establish “a centralized reporting mechanism” so that students can provide information anonymously. The gold standard, she said, is Safe2tell, a 24-hour reporting system created by Colorado authorities after the Columbine shootings. In the last full pre-pandemic school year, 2018 to 2019, it received 19,861 actionable reports. Suicide threats were the most frequently reported tip category, with drugs, bullying and self-harm among the other top categories.
As far as flagging problematic posts to a social media platform, as some teens tried to do in the case of the Uvalde shooter, “I think it’s an additional step to take, but it shouldn’t be the only step that people take,” McCarthy said. “Ultimately, that information needs to get to the authorities that can do something about it.”
That information doesn’t have to be a specific threat to be shared, McCarthy said. “If you’re seeing a picture of a gun that says, ‘I’m ready for school,’ it’s not an overt threat, but it’s veiled and it’s concerning.” Other things that are concerning are fixations on weapons, violent events, criminals or school shootings, or access to lethal weapons.
“The holistic nature of a behavioral threat assessment model is to identify students in distress or exhibiting some concerning behavior,” Alathari said. After such students are identified, a multidisciplinary team that includes teachers, administrators, counselors and resource officers will gather more information, assess the risk and put interventions in place to help the student.
According to the National Association of State Boards of Education, 18 states require school districts to have a threat-assessment system, 16 have non-codified policies, and five encourage districts to institute systems. McCarthy encourages parents whose districts don’t have such a system to advocate for one.
Parents should keep in mind that threats and behaviors that are obviously worrisome to adults might not be as clear to adolescents, experts said. “Our research shows that it really would be a mistake to think that teens can always, in turn interpret online messages or posts in an accurate way,” said James, co-author with Emily Weinstein, of the upcoming book “Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing). “Sometimes, even often, they don’t really know what is a joke versus a cry for help versus a real credible threat of violence.”
Clinical psychologist Lisa Coyne said that by expecting teens to know what to report, “we’re asking them to do something really hard, which is to understand that a statement like this, or a fixation, or a discussion about guns or other things that have been so frighteningly normalized in a lot of our culture means something bad will happen.” With all of the messages adolescents are flooded with, she asked, “How do you tell the signal from the noise?”
She suggests that a parent say to a child who might see concerning things online, “ ‘I want you to feel like it’s safe for you to come to me as your parent and just even ask me questions about it, and we’ll figure it out together,’ ” she said. Then, she said, it’s important to engage in “really, really good reflective listening, collaborative communication and empathizing, rather than immediately jumping into problem-solving.”
Parents can help teens evaluate disturbing messages by asking questions such as whether the communications are part of a pattern from the person posting, or whether the peer has friends or a community like a sports team. Concerned teens also can turn to their own friends, who might have different information, “to really get a deeper understanding of what’s going on,” James said.
In an interview with The Washington Post, one of the girls who was harassed by the Uvalde gunman but didn’t report him said she thought that was “just how online is,” as if threats and harassment are the price of being on social media.
“To some degree, I understand what they’re saying,” McCarthy said. “I think kids are exposed to a lot of just concerning content.” She recommended that parents look into monitoring apps for younger children and that older kids take “digital citizenship lessons,” such as the curriculum put together by Common Sense Media.
Parents can help their kids set boundaries online by talking about these concerns starting at a young age, the way they do about safe touching, McCarthy said. For example, “ ‘This is what a safe relationship looks like. These are relationships that might not be safe: If somebody is talking about hurting other people, hurting you, hurting themselves. That’s something that an adult needs to know about.’ ”
One thing parents shouldn’t do, the experts said, is hesitate to talk to their kids about these issues for fear of adding to their anxiety about school shootings or internet dangers. Parents can teach their kids through example, by modeling “that things can be scary and you can face them,” Coyne said.
Parents can also help ease their kids’ anxieties about school shootings by focusing on the data, McCarthy said. “I think kids need to understand that though these things happen, they’re incredibly rare. So just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s probable.”
Also important, she added, is helping kids understand all the systems in place to keep them safe, and that they can have a role in that. “When, you know, there are some personal actions you can take to keep yourself safe,” McCarthy said, “it helps you to have a better sense of psychological safety, to feel more confident in your ability to deal with situations.”