What do I say to my young son about Chicago’s gun violence

My 11-year-old son has the responsibility of watering all of the plants the backyard, in pots on the deck, and in the front.  He complains each time.  But he does it.  Lately, he asks, “Who’s going to watch me in front?”  We’ve never let our kids be outside in front of our house by themselves.  But these days, my son asks because he’s discovering what it means to be afraid. So I stand on the front steps watching him, correcting the way he waters the plants.

[tweet_dis]As Chicago residents, we know fear because of gun violence. This year, more than 1,500 people have been shot in our city.[/tweet_dis]

In 2000, my wife and I drove through a shooting in Little Village on the way home from a wedding.  We ducked.  The shots were aimed at the car in front of us.  Besides this experience, my family knows the aftermath of gang violence first hand.

So we didn’t buy a house in Little Village.  Or in Pilsen.  We moved Southwest in the city.  And it’s been quiet so far around our West Lawn home.  But last week, just a few miles away in our zip code, a 16-year-old was shot at 8:44 a.m. He was supposed to be in his 1st period class at 8:15 a.m.  I knew who that young man was.

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Last night, after running around Midway Airport, I came home to news that a 6-year-old—a little girl—was shot in Logan Square.  WTF?!

According to the Chicago Tribune, “Chicago Police said the home where the girl was wounded was a known gang hangout but the girl appears to not have been the intended target. The girl’s family has not cooperated with Investigators and no arrests have been made.”

So what do I say to my 11-year-old son about this violence?

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[Photo by damian entwistle/Flickr]

Suggested reading

Rick Rivera’s first novel charts the sometimes hilarious, sometimes bitter-sweet saga of growing up in two cultures with the American Dream as a guiding light. In a series of poignant vignettes, the reader follows Ricky Coronado’s search for identity—a search made more difficult by the specter of his father’s suicide and the pressures placed upon him by his strong-willed mother. The narrator is a quiet but mischievous boy who retells the antics of his close-knit and often eccentric family. The amusing adventures of the clan include his stepfather’s proposal to his mother, visits to the psychiatrist and the comic misconstruction of Catholic catechism by well-meaning nuns. In his journey of self-discovery that harkens to the pioneer work of Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Brown Buffalo adventures, Ricky comes to the same solution that generations of hyphenated Americans have reached: the painful but rewarding creation of a new self that combines elements of both ethnic realities.

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