When ‘Fantasy’

Becomes A Treat

To the Editor:

We recently had an experience with our son at Reed Intermediate School that we never expected to have in Newtown. Our son was specially addressed in a very threatening manner in another child’s school writing journal; a manner to be frank, that blew our minds.

As most probably do not know, I have quite a bit of experience with the subject of physical security and life-threatening situations. Therefore, I have a different perspective when dealing with these types of situations than most other parents. As my wife and I became exposed to more details of the situation, the level of concern we felt increased exponentially. The child that wrote the journal entry thought things through very specifically. In my experience, this was not a casual piece of “fantasy writing” as the school leadership described. This was a precursor to potentially more serious actions. By the way, when is writing about killing another student in your class and his family an acceptable fantasy?

We had a meeting with our school principal. In attendance were the people that are responsible for looking out for the well-being of our children at Reed Intermediate School. Folks, we are in big trouble if something outside the normal realm of teaching our kids occurs. The primary concern of this group was protecting the rights of the child who did the bit of “fantasy writing.” Our son… well we had to hope that the kid was only fantasizing. We were provided with zero comfort from this meeting or from subsequent communications with the school. We were so concerned about the lack of attention this matter was receiving that we retained the services of an attorney to elevate the level of focus on this matter. Unfortunately, the attorney suffered from the same rhetoric and fluff from the school leadership as we did.

We are extremely unhappy about the way this issue was handled. We are terrified about the concept of what may or could in the future happen. Not to be overly dramatic, [but] read the facts about the boy in Minnesota (this shooting back in April happened four days after the situation occurred with our son). He was doing a bit of “fantasy writing” before he decided to get serious and enter his school with a weapon and kill innocent staff and students.

In all of my experience, there is one common theme when individuals suffer from horrific events: they all thought that it would never happen to them or in their town.

The purpose of our writing this letter is simply to make other families aware that, yes, we live in a wonderful community, but there is no doubt in our minds that with all the violence on television, video games, etc, that children and their actions need to be monitored for the safety of us all.

Sincerely,

Julia and Joseph Morris

Hattertown Road, Newtown                                            June 2, 2005