This week I’m setting my regular content aside to talk about something close to my heart, and close to this community. My heart is with everyone affected by the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School last Thursday.
I knew Griffin J. John II, the shooter, a little, through a special education program at Silver Rail Elementary. I am horrified by what he did. I won’t guess at his life or his reasons, and I can’t speak for him. I can speak about the kind of classroom he was in, because I’ve spent years in and around them as a parent.
I’ve been reading the online comments about him: freak, monster, evil. They sadden me. He was a kid too, and I believe something went wrong long before last Thursday, though I don’t know what. Words like these end the conversation. If he’s only a monster, he could never have been helped, and I don’t believe that. Conversations about guns and school security are needed and can save lives. But they only limit the damage once a child is already in crisis. They don’t prevent him from getting there. The Secret Service studied 41 school attacks and found no single profile. But nearly every attacker had trouble at home, all had trouble with peers or partners, most had been bullied and most worried the people around them before they acted. None of that excuses anything. It means there were chances to reach these kids long before. Treatment helps kids who are already carrying the hurt, but real prevention starts much earlier.
Kids who struggle in school often struggle from the start. A kindergartener finds the room too loud, too bright and too much, and melts down. The school sends them home, which is what they wanted, so they learn that acting out works and do it again. The label follows them: behavior problem. Then comes a separate classroom, then a separate program in another school, each more restrictive than the last. In some of these programs, kids are physically restrained and put in isolation rooms, and fights and bullying are part of every day. Along the way, kids go from curious to hopeless.
Our system isn’t designed for children who struggle. When a kid is too loud, we tuck them away, and even among struggling kids we sort. The quiet ones tend to stay included. The noisy, messy ones are kept apart from the rest of the school and asked to talk about what hurts. We call it support. Mostly it is containment. A room full of children who are all struggling is rarely a place where anyone heals.
The cost is real. Kids pulled out of general education miss instruction, fall behind and lose friendships, which makes it harder to return to their neighborhood schools. Behind many of these kids is a family stretched too thin: a single parent working long hours, money that never covers it, burnout, unsupported neurodivergence, addiction or abuse. Schools can’t fix all of that, and overworked teachers focus on what they can see: the behavior. But an overwhelmed child can’t simply choose to stop. In my experience, kids made to obey out of fear learn that power wins, and they build resentment. Anger is a sign that something was unfair or something was lost. If no one asks about it, a child learns that no one is coming to help.
So here is how we catch kids, and their families, before they fall through the cracks.
In the classroom:
-Stop sending kids home as the consequence. It teaches a child that acting out is the way out, and leaves them alone with the problem.
-Give them a calm place with a trained adult who stays. A child in a big feeling needs a person, not an empty room or a restraint.
-Give each struggling child one trusted adult, across years. Trust takes time, and a child who starts over every September never gets to finish.
-Keep them part of the whole school. Lunch, recess and activities with everyone else, so they belong to the school and stay connected to friends.
-Start the day with a two-minute check-in. “How are you coming in today?” is how you learn about the dog that died or the parent who moved out before it shows up as behavior.
-Teach every child conflict and repair. Say what happened, take responsibility, make it right. Struggling kids shouldn’t be the only ones expected to learn compassion.
-Bring support into the regular classroom. Help should come to the child, so getting help doesn’t mean being sent away.
For families:
-Put an advocate in every school. Someone who can connect a family to food, housing and care, so a hard home gets help before it becomes a crisis.
-Call home with good news, too. A parent whose phone only rings with trouble starts to dread it.
-Shorten the wait for help. Support that takes months to arrive comes after the damage is done.
-Ask what a child is going home to, with curiosity, not judgment. Most parents are doing the best they can, and often it isn’t enough.
-The rest of us can be the adult who stays: a coach, a neighbor, a mentor, a friend. You don’t need a degree to say, “I see you, and I’m not going anywhere.” Draw them in, keep them close, don’t push them out.
-I don’t know exactly what Griffin needed. But whatever it was, he didn’t get it. I know what those rooms did to my kid, and I saw what they did to others. I also saw whose kids got sent to these classrooms, and whose didn’t. In my experience it followed race, income, and which parents had the time, money and clout to push back.
-Most hurt kids never hurt anyone. They carry it. When it festers, it can lead to withdrawal, addiction, compulsive behaviors, depression, eating disorders and, rarely, violence. Those outcomes can be prevented. That is reason enough to change things.
If you’re a parent or teacher who has lived this, I’d like to hear from you. If you or a child you love is struggling, call or text 988, any hour.
Questions or thoughts? Write to Mary@Myco.Vision.
—Editor’s note: Due to privacy considerations, this column has been updated from the original version.
This article appears in the Source October 22, 2026.
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Thank you so much for publishing this. As a mother to a teen with school related trauma and a history of reactions to perceived injustice with physical contact, I feel this so deeply. Although this shooting is abhorrent and he should not have had access to guns, he was also a child who was hurting.
Thank you. Hopefully someone with the power to make change is listening.