Marching to the Drum of a Different Beater

First, I would like to make one plea in light of another school shooting (in fact this past week there were three such shootings in America that I know of, one involving a school, another a staff development session, and another a 20-year-old who shot up his friends while they were sleeping. As I have pointed out before, all the shooters were young men.).

My plea is this: parents, please, please, please talk to your children about not making snide, rude remarks even jokingly, outloud or even whispered, about another person, foe or even friend. Today's kids say whatever pops into their minds without thinking first and it is very often hurtful, sometimes without even meaning to be, but from what I have observed today, most are completely premeditated.

I don't want to analyze why shooters shoot (although this isn't hard to imagine) or why kids say everything that pops into their head outloud these days (although Chrissie's previous article might explain part of it). But, I cannot reiterate enough: please, please tell your middle and high school aged children not to make fun of someone, even jokingly. Talk to them today.

I can hear some people now saying that it is a cold, cruel world and people should learn to take things in stride. It may be a cold world, but it's not colder than seeing your child lowered into the cold ground, shot by another child who felt someone had bullied him. It's not colder than the heartbreak parents must feel at seeing their child, who had been laughed at one time too many, locked up in a cold juvenile detention cell until he is 18 for taking a gun to school.

Proverbs says "Death and life are in the power of the word." The word death comes first in the statement because words can kill another person, maybe not physically, but just as surely mentally. At a young age the words are harder to get over. They leave deep wounds.

After a blog I wrote following the VT shooting, one young man wrote in to say that he could totally understand why the gunman did what he did, as some teens/young adults are fed up with the insults done them on a daily basis, by acquaintances, school mates, stangers, even just by society in general. In a society in which everyone feels entitled, rage is going to be the end result.

I cannot urge you enough to talk to your child about not saying hurtful things about other people out loud, nor under his/her breath for that matter, as they are audible in another equally hurtful way. Teach your child to deal straightforwardly with people, to mind his or her own business, and to treat others the way he or she would like to be treated. While they may feel entitled because they have been told their opinion is all important by our *me, me, me* society, the stark reality is that they are not entitled to say whatever they want about another person outloud and it can only lead to trouble if they do.

There is freedaom of speech, yes, but there is not freedom to bully others. Oklahoma has anti-bullying legislation. The Oklahoma State Department of Education also has a hotline for reporting any kind of suspicious behavior.

In a related issue, NPR has just done a story on boot camps aimed at reforming drastic teen behavior. At live-in boot camps kids have been beaten and even killed. There must be some proven benefit in behavior modification or boot camps would not continue to exist. If you are at the end of your rope with your teen and are contemplating sending your child to such a facility, I would thoroughly investigate it before commiting, no matter how desperate you are. I have not heard any bad reports on Oklahoma's teen boot camps, which is hopefully to our credit.

Here is the link to the NPR story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15149800