As a woman, I can, and do, cry helpless tears when I see the endless and awful parade of horror stories that the media trots out for sensationalized consumption. I get it. The media has its flaws, but it can also shed light in the darkest corners. 'Nuff said on that.
As a parent, I am baffled, befuddled, and completely pissed off because I do not understand how the boys—and for that matter, the other girls—in the recent teen gang rape crimes in Canada and the U.S. have been allowed to even conceive of such behaviour as possible. I don't mean as acceptable. I mean as thinkable.
I am not always a great parent. I may neglect to serve a vegetable at dinner sometimes. I sleep in on the weekends, and they have to wait for breakfast. I am often late driving them to school. BUT. I am hyper-aware of every possible misstep my children make and attempt to make it a teachable moment.
Did they point out a fat person in the store? Everyone comes in all shapes and sizes. A kid at school is kind of smelly? That may be, but they are still a person with feelings and you'd better not tease them. They like a girl because she's pretty? That's nice, honey, but I hope you like her because she is smart and funny, too.
I find myself constantly nipping at their heels, herding them like a sheepdog toward the goal of becoming good, kind, and honest adults. I assumed everyone else was doing the same. That's our job; we signed up for it willingly. To parent: it is a verb, an action I undertake daily. Some days it exhausts me more than I care to admit.
Don't get me wrong; I understand that kids can make errors in judgement, have little impulse control, and do things just to see what might happen. But the events that have been unfolding in these and countless other similar stories do not fall into these categories.
As toddlers, my kids learned one basic rule: no hitting, no throwing, no hurting. NO HURTING. Don't we all have this rule in some form for our children? Haven't we repeated it again and again, on an unending loop so it's always in their heads like a pesky ear worm? Who has not done this?
Who has not been parenting their children so that when they grow into teenagers with a desperate need to be somebody, with an ache to be popular, with a bullish drive to dominate their peers they contemplate unthinkable acts upon their schoolmates? Those are the children who grow untethered, uncorrected. These are the children who gang up together, who sneer, snicker, and grow bolder. They attack, and they watch like it isn’t real, and God help us, they photograph and mock and ridicule and continue to hurt...for years.
I am ashamed that I am part of a generation of parents that is not effectively doing its collective job. It shouldn't be hard to raise children who are not primal, feral animals. Our parents taught us a simple, golden rule: to treat others as we would like to be treated. We have learned it; now we must teach it.
Printer-friendly version