After his friend was stabbed, my son didn’t want to go to school. My son didn’t want to talk to me at first. He would say, “If I was there, imagine if I was there, he would have stabbed me. Imagine if I would have gotten stabbed, imagine if he would have killed me.” He was scared, he was terrified.

 

My daughter was scared
For a long time my daughter was scared. She wouldn’t go to the bathroom by herself, take a bath by herself, or sleep in her bed. It was just a whole lot of things that she had to go through. I know in the back of her head it’s still there.

 

Nightmares
My kids have a lot of nightmares. They are always crying, “we don’t want to live there, we hate it there.” You have to learn to deal with things. I know my kids are very strong. They’ve been handling bad situations, and they handle it pretty well.

 

Overprotective
Sometimes, my son is overprotective of my daughter. He feels like he has to watch out for her after she was shot.

 

My kids get scared. There’s been a few times where kids have gotten killed. It’s not just adults who get hurt or are doing wrong things, but these are children just like them that are not doing anything wrong, they’re just walking to the corner store. It was in the wrong place and then they got shot. When you see stuff like that it scares kids because it could have been them walking to the corner store. A lot of the times, it scares them and it makes them not want to do things or put themselves in those positions.

 

Going to the cemetery
My daughter, I have to tell her we can’t go the cemetery every day. She says, “I want to see my cousin.” If it’s up to her, we’re going to the cemetery every day. She’s at the stage where she made a song for him, and she talks a lot to him. She’s ten but she thinks she’s the protector over his father and brother. She always wants to call and check on them, and to make sure they’re ok.

 

My son wants answers
My son takes it in and thinks about it. It’s very interesting, he comes to us with questions that make everybody say, “Wow, is this a grown man or a little boy?” He wants to know why they shot his cousin, why he died. He wants to know ifs, ands, whats, buts, he wants answers to everything. He will sit there until you at least say something to him, at least say “I don’t know why that happened.” You have to say something for him to walk back away.