Overreact Much?

I've been scouring the web looking for interesting and thought-provoking stuff for the blog.  Just before the tragic school shooting that occurred near Cleveland, Ohio last week, I found this unbelievable article about a four year old's drawing that led to her dad's arrest in Kitchener, Ontario.

Now, my initial reaction was - are you kidding me?? A small child draws a picture and they immediately send in the cavalry? It seemed a drastic case of reacting first and asking questions later.

But then I read about yet another senseless tragedy involving a young student and a gun....and I backed off my outraged stance a little bit.

[Not the drawing referenced in the article. Photo from www.littledaisycafe.com.]

I'm feeling kind of torn now....on the one hand, we shouldn't assume that every picture a child draws or every story he or she tells has some basis in reality.  After all, the wonderful thing about being a kid is learning to use your imagination, envisioning worlds that don't look like ours, feeling like the sky is the limit. If they want to draw aliens and monsters - so what?  We shouldn't make our kids afraid of being creative.

And, the dangers of overreacting are important to consider.  First, there's the encroachment on civil liberties. This father was arrested and strip searched, and his home was searched, based on nothing more than his daughter's drawing of him with a gun "getting the bad guys and monsters." (According to the Canadian media, the drawing did not contain any violent imagery beyond the father holding a gun; there were no bleeding people in the drawing.) The guy had no idea why he was in trouble. Now, the Canadians may do some things differently than we do, but they do have protections in their laws for civil liberties.

And this reaction seems to have far exceeded the "problem." When the home was searched, it contained no firearms.  A toy gun was the only "gun" to be found.

Photo from www.slate.com

Second, and just as important, the reaction to this picture triggered the involvement of Family and Social Services. Involving a government agency when there is not an actual threat can cause unnecessary harm and upheaval for children. What if the father had lost custody of his child while they investigated?  She could needlessly been placed in foster care even though her parent did nothing wrong.  There is no excuse for that kind of overreaching and expenditure of resources that could be used to address real problems, such as abusive homes. Perhaps, I don't know, talking to the father before pursuing further investigation may have been useful?

But it's time to play devil's advocate. So, on the other hand, should we be encouraging other forms of creativity?  Should we be disturbed by imagery that is even slightly violent, especially when there are so many other real or make-believe things that kids can draw? Perhaps it was reasonable for a teacher to see this and to conclude that this child had been around her father holding a gun, or around his guns, which, of course, is unsafe.

Is it preferable for school employees to overreact, given the horrible, violent events that have occurred in schools in recent years - as recently as last week?  To take a "better safe than sorry" approach?

I, for one, do not like guns. I do not want Anna playing with toy guns. With the popularity of squirt guns (which I admit I loved as a kid) and Nerf guns, among other toys, I know I can't prevent her from playing with them forever. I won't always know what toys she may be playing with at friends' houses. But I'm not buying any.

Photo from www.momlogic.com

I know, I know, guns don't kill people, people kill people. I have heard all the arguments before. And that may be true, but people with guns sure do a lot more widespread harm a lot more quickly than they could with other types of weapons.  Reasonably limiting access to them sure has the potential to reduce the number of casualties if some crazy person decides to go hurt people. And I'm sorry, but nobody needs an assault rifle to go hunting, or for personal protection. Seriously.

But I don't want to veer off into a general debate about gun control, which would take a lot more than one paragraph. Instead, I want to get some input from you - what do you think?  Did the school and the authorities handle this appropriately out of concern for the safety of this child and others?  Or did they fly way too far off the handle and violate someone's rights for something that turned out to be nothing? Was this particular situation an example of overreacting, but it's still a good idea to investigate something like this? If they had found a number of weapons in the home, would your answer be different?

Discuss.