This made me so sad

I was driving in the car the other day with the girls in the back seat. A test of the emergency broadcast system came on the radio - you know, that annoying noise alarm thing. Kiera immediately got panicky because she is terrified of storms. I calmed her down as best I could explaining that it was just a test, just a drill.

She asked a ton of questions (as usual), including "why do they do those tests?"

I told her so that we know the system works when there is an actual emergency. I said, "Just like you do practice drills at school for earthquakes and tornados and stuff, right?"

Then she started chatting away about the different drills and how they work: they go outside for fire drills, under their desks for earthquakes and line up in the hallway in the fetal position for tornadoes. She asked me if I did those when I was in school and I told her that I, in fact, did.

Then she said, "OH, and there's the drill for a bad person at the school where we have to hide in the back of the room so no one knows we're in there. I don't like that one."

I froze for a second. It made me so sad to think that kids have to think about things like that.

She asked me if we did THAT drill when I was in school and I told her that I, in fact, did not.

She asked hard questions (as usual) including "why do people do bad things like that?"

It really breaks my heart to answer questions like that.

But we talked about how some people do bad things because they are... well, bad... or because they are sick. And this lead to talking about how we must always be aware of our surroundings and how we must never talk to strangers or take anything from them or get in a car with them, etc. etc.

THEN, later in this same trip... she says that she heard about the school bus that crashed on its way to a field trip and a 6 year-old boy died (this had just happened in our area a day or two prior to this conversation). I asked her where she even heard about this. We don't watch the news at home. She said her teacher talked to the class about it (thanks, teacher).

Kiera said that lots of people must be sad about the boy dying but "I bet the saddest person is his mom." She went on: "she probably got there and looked around like "where is my kid?" and then found out that he was dead and cried and cried. Because she loved him so much."

Seriously, these conversations make my heart HURT.