Bullets should never be a normal part of childhood
Dr. Regan Williams, a trauma specialist at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, said she’s often struck by how child gunshot victims look like...children.
They wear ponytails. Headbands. Earrings. Things they would be seen wearing in school photos or Instagram pics. Normal kid stuff.
The problem is that guns have also been normalized as instruments of protection and bravado, when they should be regarded as instruments of death and pain. And children suffer. Back in 2016, an investigation by The Associated Press and USA TODAY Network found that Memphis ranked No. 1 among the nation’s large cities when it came to accidental child shootings — largely because many people here buy guns to protect their children, but they neglect to protect their children from the guns.
The latest example of this happened just two months ago, when 12year-old Tytkeanna James died after apparently being shot by a 13year-old who got their mother’s gun from the console of her SUV. The gun was unsecured, and Tytkeanna’s mother, Katrena Blackshire, was charged with criminally negligent homicide and aggravated child abuse.
Then there’s children like 2-year-old Laylah Washington, who was fatally shot in 2017, apparently by some fools who were angry at her mother for yelling at them when their reckless driving was about to damage her car.
Laylah’s case remains unsolved.
Doctors like Williams are frustrated by this; by the number of children who come to Le Bonheur with gunshot wounds, which has grown from 40 to 96 since 2016.
They are so frustrated, in fact, they’re launching a community initiative to study what can be done about this.
But while that study will certainly shed light on why so many children wind up being shot here, hopefully it will illuminate the children who survive their wounds and find answers for them.
‘As a mother, that’s very disturbing to me’
Chantelle Stokes, hospital-violence liaison for Regional 1 Health, recalls the struggle of a teenager who was injured in a random shooting.
“He was jumpy and afraid, to the point where he didn’t want to sleep in his bed alone,” she said. “As a mother, that was very disturbing for me.”
“Children express their response to trauma in a number of different ways,” said Dr. Altha Stewart, chief of Social and Community Psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
“Some may become hyper-vigilant. If they’re a young child and they were potty-trained, they might revert back to when they weren’t potty trained. A child who was independent might start hugging her mom’s leg, and not want to be out of her sight...
“A child who was eventempered might become more aggressive and belligerent.”
“Basically, those traumas get locked in their brains,” said Eraina Schauss, an assistant professor of counseling, educational psychology and research at the University of Memphis.
“You see a lot of PTSD symptoms in children who have been shot, and if they aren’t treated, it can worsen. The earlier the intervention, the better.”
But alas, like the rest of the U.S., Memphis and Tennessee have few child psychiatrists to go around.
According to the American Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, only 1 to 17 psychiatrists are available for every 100,000 children who need help.
The shortage is fueled by high demand, as growing numbers of children are struggling with mental health issues, and low supply; psychiatrists aren’t reimbursed as richly as other medical fields.
All of that adds to the chances that children who are facing life after having a bullet put through them will have a tougher time becoming whole again.
“There’s a belief that because they’re young, they’ll grow out of it,” said Stewart, who is also associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Health in Justice Involved Youth at UTHSC.
“The science tells us this is not true. It [being shot] changes their brains, and it sets them up psychologically, for other problems in their lives.”
It’s good that the doctors at Le Bonheur want to find out how they can be part of the solution in preventing children from being shot — especially since they’re fighting a culture that, on many levels, has accepted the violence destroying children’s lives as a fixture and not an aberration.
“We all have a role to play here,” Stewart said. “One of the things we have to do is help the community understand that this isn’t normal, and the fact that it happens a lot doesn’t make it normal.”
And, the stories of people like Dr. Williams show that the trauma specialists and doctors who try to save these children’s lives also aren’t accepting violence as normal.
Or as just another day on the job.