Put the Parents in Jail
When I was in high school, a school shooting was a drug deal gone wrong on a playground in Harlem. It wasn’t a suburban middle class kid unloading a 12 gauge shotgun into his tenth grade math teacher.
But Columbine changed everything, and since that day there have been nineteen school shootings in 13 different states in a total of eight years. The most recent occured today when a 16-year-old attending a Memphis High School was was shot while in gym class.
I can’t begin to understand the motives behind these child killers, but from my perspective, I do remember what it was like to be an awkward teenager yearning for acceptance.
Kids called me dildo, beat me up to make themselves look cool, and my divorced parents were too wrapped up in their own lives to take the time to understand mine.
I have to admit, it never occurred to me to just kill everyone, but it wouldn’t have mattered we didn’t own a gun and I didn’t have the money to buy one. But the truth is even if I had one, I probably would have taken my life long before I had the chance to take someone elses.
Everyone always wants to blame the system. The system failed these troubled kids. The system should have prevented this tragedy. But what about the parents? Where were they?
The system can have children pass through metal detectors. And the system can have video surveillance equipment. And the system can hire therapists and psychologists. But it’s the parents who need to be held responsible for their child’s actions.
It’s the parents who have to prevent their six-year-old son from bringing in a .357 magnum into show and tell. It’s the parents who have to know that their fourteen-year-old son is sawing off a shotgun in his bedroom. It’s the parents that need to know that their seventeen-year-old son has laid out a plan on his Myspace page to kill his entire class.
And if the parents fail to prevent their child, then they should be sent to jail. All it takes is one set of parents to be sent to jail for their child’s crime, for thousands of others to take an interest in their own children.
I have been thinking about your response all night, it was strong, poignant and emotional. And I wanted to give it the weight and attention it deserves.
Part of the reason why I began posting daily observations was so that I could catalogue my thoughts and in the process hopefully make sense of the world in which I live. I recognize that everyone has a different unique perspective which is why from the start I have encouraged everyone to post their own observations, whether they be a comment on mine or an original one of their own, all are welcome.
Now, that being said. I do agree with you it is a different world then when you and I grew up, just as it will be a different world when your children grow up.
I think that there is only so much any person can do as a parent. I know it’s overwhelming, and I know not because I’m a parent (b/c I’m not) but because of what I put my parents through.
And while the outlet for kids have changed from playing wiffle ball in the backyard to building a myspace page and talking on their cellphone — kids are just kids. They are always looking for ways to not only discover the world but also trying to express their voice. And in that process, they might close themselves off and defy the boundaries that are set by their parents.
Parents aren’t police offcers, and given the stresses of modern life, I don’t think parents have time to be police officers. But they do need to be open, honest, and willing to communicate with their children so that their son or daughter does not think that they are alone in the world.
My observation was not meant to be an indictment of parents but an expression of the great solitude I felt as a child because my parents weren’t open to communication.
Your observation was particularly powerful for me because I can see not only how frustrated you are, but really how much you love your children.
And I’m sure if your children don’t appreciate it now, one day they will.
-dylan
From this article, I’m going to guess that you don’t have children, and that if you do, you definitely don’t have teenagers.
Let me point out a few things you haven’t experienced, and likely haven’t thought about. For the record, I am a single mother of two teenagers.
When I was growing up, parents WERE more or less in control. And even a mere 30 years ago, it was a helluva lot easier to be in control. You had to monitor television, a phone that was connected to the wall, and your child’s whereabouts, and that was about it. Consider that now parents have to monitor cell-phones, Myspace, Facebook, IM, chat rooms, “live” video gaming, and internet surfing. Also consider that kids really couldn’t get into R rated movies when I was growing up. Kids get in all the time now, WITHOUT a parent.
Let me also remind you that most of the above list involves an incredible amount of anonymity. I can and do monitor my children’s Facebooks, as well as their friends, but if they get “discovered” doing anything on the internet, they just get more clever about it. They go to someone else’s house, the library, or even the computer lab at school and they open new accounts under pseudonyms.
Not to mention that in 1970 a family could exist reasonably well on one income that required only 30 hours per week. Now both parents have to work to even survive, and many of them still aren’t. They work 40+ hours and have commutes.
All of that makes a parents job exponentially more difficult than our parents’ job. It’s now a full-time job and then some, and pardon the parent for having to work and have a little down time for everyone’s sanity.
Still, that’s not all of it. Even if we could somehow manage to monitor all of the devices and corners of the internet, what can we do about it? State after state are banning spanking. I don’t advocate the beating of children, and I myself only ever received one spanking in my lifetime, but I always knew damn well there was a line I had better not cross. My parents were loving, but I had limits. Let me tell you how “setting limits” goes over with a kid these days.
Parent: “Stop that”
Teen: “No, Eff You!”
Parent: “Go to your room!”
Teen: “No.”
Parent: “Then you’re grounded”
Teen: “I don’t care”
Parent: “I SAID go to your room”
Teen: “What are you going to do about it?”
And WHAT is the parent going to do about it? What CAN they do about it? Call the police? Parents in my affluent neighborhood are doing just that because there is no “or else” anymore. Parents have been stripped of all rights and children have been given an abundance they are ill-equipped to handle. When a child says “NO” there is nothing more a parent can do that won’t GET THEM THROWN IN JAIL or break up the family.
So, duh. This IS a societal issue. Every parent I know is busting their ass in and out of work to keep up with their children. Society has created the ground for Lord of the Flies and persecuting the parents. And for the record, parents ARE being prosecuted in court for their children’s behavior every DAMN day. Kids refuse to go to school? Parents get slapped with a fine or criminally prosecuted.
You want parents to be responsible? Then fight to give them their rights back. And stop defending our overly violent media and attitudes while you’re at it.
Yes! Throw the parents in jail! We should also throw their surviving grandparents in jail as well. And not just for school shootings, parents and grand-parents should be jailed when children use drugs, get into fights, truancy, umm.. jaywalking, etc. We should make huge multi-family jails and call them “family punishment re-education camps” and use loud speakers to gently reinforce your great message:”You don’t think for yourself” “You are your parents” “Your free will is just an extension of your parents will” “Force your children do well or you will go to jail!!” “Putting tremendous amounts of pressure on your children to succeed out of your own fear will make them better people”
If you couldn’t tell, that’s sarcasm, and this article is bordering on the most ignorant thing I have ever read.