Story highlights Juliette Kayyem: Every parent fears leaving a child at a show and never seeing her again

She says what we can do is empower kids with a plan for such situations; make them fearless

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem is the author of the best-selling "Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home." She is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, host of the national security podcast "The SCIF" and founder of Kayyem Solutions, a security consulting firm. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) No victim of terror is deserving. But the attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, on Monday night feels different. It reaches into the core fear of any parent -- that you could send your child off to an event and for reasons that are cruel and evil never see them again.

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By now, if you follow the news, you know the drill in these situations: a potential suspect and possible suicide bomber; a search for his colleagues and family; an emerging likelihood that he was known to authorities before. I am a national security analyst. This is the zone I work in.

But I also have three children. Grande plays often on our car radio. She is not a typical pop star: she is tough and feisty, she represents everything we want our daughters to become. Fearless.

No parent is thinking about raising fearless kids right now. Their kids will be tied to them by their metaphoric leashes for the foreseeable future. That's the real power of this attack: not only are the victims so particularly undeserving, they are also among the most vulnerable in the immediate aftermath when terror like this strikes.

They are searching for their parents and in many cases their parents are not there. Some of the images that have been cropping up on social media and TV show waiting parents -- waiting just like I have for my kids at events -- standing outside the auditorium, banished to the other side. It is a source of humor -- "mom, you wait here" -- and we send our kids off to enjoy themselves. Because we want them to be fearless.

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