Alison Berkowitz, who describes herself as a teacher and doctoral candidate from Baltimore, Maryland, in her Twitter profile, posted a picture of a little girl’s arm covered in marker. The words, in childish purple script, read: “Love mom and dad.” Berkowitz writes that the child’s mother, Shelley Harrison Reed, asked her young daughter why she’d written that on her arm.

Her answer? Their school had had a “genuine lockdown” earlier that day. “In case the bad guy got to us and I got killed, you and daddy would know that I love you,” Reed says her daughter explained.

In an extended Facebook post, Reed explains that the cause of the lockdown was a bomb threat. While everything was ultimately okay, her children were understandably frightened. When they got home, Reed says they talked about it together, but it wasn’t until later in the evening that she noticed the text on her daughter’s arm.