OPINION: The collective trauma at the school gates

The term “collective trauma” never really meant much to me until this morning.

On a normal day, I wouldn’t go with on the school run due to the fact I’m normally working from 7am, so that is very much the job of my wife.

However, last night, I could see she was not at all comfortable taking our daughter, aged just four, to school by herself.

Over the weekend, WhatsApp groups were filled with scared parents talking about pulling their children out of school – which is a large Jewish school – altogether due to legitimate security fears.

This could just be me, but having worked in the Jewish community for the vast majority of my life, until two years ago, I was a bit less concerned about it because I’ve seen and dealt with these issues for years, and having covered Russia since Putin launched his invasion last year, I might also be slightly desensitized to some of what is going on.

However, this morning, having taken time off work specifically to make sure my daughter got to school OK and to see for myself that everything was safe outside the building, the term “collective trauma” suddenly became a whole lot more real for me, and snapped me out of the desensitizedness I was feeling.

There was an eerie quiet outside the gates with visibly less parents and children around, which was broken by the mum of my wife’s friend approaching us almost on the verge of tears because they have relatives in Israel – I tried (pretty much in vein) to keep our daughter away from the conversation, as I’m adamant she does not need to be dealing with what we’re all going through at her age.

Having finally got through the heavily-guarded gates – which had three security guards, and later a police presence – several parents walked past us with their children, or having already dropped their children off at this morning’s breakfast club, and we all gave each other a very nervous and very much of a “yeah, this is uncomfortable” head nod or “morning” without any real conversation.

But no matter how much added security the schools have, we will never feel safe.

It was, in reality, a quick dash inside because we all wanted to get this over with and back to relative safety as quickly as possible.

The phrase “you alright?”, which most Brits greet each other with, was not uttered this morning . . . we all know we aren’t “alright”.

Inside the school, the staff and teachers we came across were noticeably overly nice to our daughter in a bid to keep some sense of happiness for their sake, while looking very concerned and on edge when turning to us as parents.

Kudos to the school – which I’m not naming, for obvious security reasons – for keeping parents up-to-date over the weekend and yesterday morning, with the latest security measures.

But no matter how much added security the schools have, we will never feel safe.

The collective trauma we as a community, and as parents at the school gates, are now feeling will take a long time to get over . . . and I highly doubt many of us ever will.

I just hope for everyone’s sake, that we can shield our children from it in some way, because they do not need to be part of our collective trauma, no matter what age they are.