NEW DELHI: The first time her son's school received a bomb threat, Mona Dhawan dismissed it as an isolated incident. When it happened again, it was harder to ignore. On a humid monsoon morning in Vikaspuri, she froze at a newsflash announcing the name of her son's school among those targeted.
She was about to leave for the school when her 13-year-old son walked in. The children had already been sent home on buses. "When you are in that situation, you don't know what to do," she shrugged.
Other parents, speaking to TOI, expressed similar anxieties. These hoax calls not only disturb them mentally, but also disrupt their routines and work. Deepak Pandey, father of a Class III student in a private school in south Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave, said, "Even during peak office hours in the morning, just minutes after dropping our children off, we've had to turn back to pick them up again."
Many parents point out that while communication used to initially be channelled through teachers, it now comes to them through parent coordinators. Pandey added that schools and authorities needed to think beyond just internal checks and employ crowd-control measures due to the traffic and chaos that ensues when parents rush to pick up their children in panic.
Some parents noted that some schools did have better systems for crowd management. Ravi, whose child studies at GD Goenka in Rohini's Sector-22, said that the school had a set procedure for such situations. "The transport system helps ease the stress for parents. The children are returned home in the school buses so parents need not rush to pick them up," he said.
When schools clarify the details of the threat email with transparency and inform them about the evacuation procedures, parents feel a degree of relief. But mentally, such threats continue to take a toll. Mitashi Pawar, child counsellor at a school with branches in Delhi and NCR, remembered the last threat that the school received during the middle of an event. "The younger children and special-needs children are the most impacted because they make associations based on buzz words," she said. "They hear words like bomb and think of horror movies or news of recent incidents on TV, which they don't understand in entirety either."
Other counsellors say that hoaxes erode a child's safety and also trigger anxiety. Dr Komalpreet Kaur, who has 17 years of experience working with adolescents, says that for youngsters who have suffered trauma in the past, these regular bomb threats can trigger old wounds and old fears.
Alarmed by the violent language used in several threats, counsellors also highlight that in many of the incidents, students themselves are the perpetrators. Dr Ambika Dutta, a mental health counsellor with nearly a decade of experience working across schools, said, "This stems from inquisitiveness and a desire to challenge authority as well as a worrying lack of sensitivity."
Suggested solutions include using the first period of the school day, often referred to as the 'zero period', for sensitisation sessions on such dangers, teaching students the cause-and-effect relationship of their actions in a way that makes them internalise responsibility and a peer mentoring system. Dr Dutta added, "When students themselves take on the responsibility of doing good and guiding their peers, it builds a culture of accountability within the school."
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