The Question is WHY?

I’m sitting looking out the window to my office. It’s an absolutely cloudless sky, with only a very slight breeze. The sun is starting to dip behind the mountains to the West. It’s a beautiful day. I can see several neighborhood children outside riding their bicycles up and down the street. It’s reasonably safe since the street is not a through street. I wonder as I watch these kids if any of them might end up so mentally degraded that they might someday contemplate doing what these 2 kids in Littleton, Colorado have done, and I just cannot fathom it.

As if it’s not enough that we are on the brink of World War 3. The horrific tragedy in Littleton, Colorado is now the talk of the nation. People are asking a myriad of questions, but all these questions can be distilled down to WHY? Why did this happen? What made these kids become so hate-filled that they would meticulously plan to murder their classmates and teachers? Many theories have already been postulated. Some say it’s because of the endless violence kids have access to through television, movies, the Internet, and computer games. These people say that this has desensitized kids to violence and death to the point where it is no longer thought of as being the horrible thing it truly is. Maybe this is true, but maybe not. There are conflicting studies pointing both to and away from these things. In my opinion, I don’t think it is the root cause at all.

I believe that the root of all the violent behavior in our kids today stems from one simple thing: Today’s media and social environment have succeeded in making parenting a near impossible job. Today, a woman can swat her out-of-control 6 year old on the butt in a supermarket and be arrested. Today, if a parent tries to tell their kid what they will or will not do, that kid can say “fine, I’ll just call the cops or Child Protective Services and tell them that you abuse me”.

What kind of crap is this? What is this “it takes a village” BS?? Because of those people who believe they should stick their noses in private family matters, we have parents who have had their parental rights as well as responsibilities taken away. I personally have seen it. I have seen it happen on two separate occasions. One kid was 8 years old, and because he didn’t want to do something his mother asked him to do, he called the police and outright LIED to them, saying his mother beat him. Naturally, the police showed up at the door, but when the pressure was on, the kid recanted his story, telling the police that he was mad at his mom for asking him to do this thing, and had been told AT HIS SCHOOL that this was what you did if you parents did do things to hurt you.

These kids are told at school that their parents cannot hurt them or they will be in trouble with the police. Well, these kids don’t see the difference between being disciplined by being spanked or grounded and being truly beaten and abused. To them it’s all the same thing. As a matter of fact, to Child Protective Services, it’s the same thing too. Luckily for this parent, the police weren’t the mindless type that you so often see in these cases, and they gave the child a stern warning against doing this sort of thing in the future. The other child is my own 14 year-old son, who did this to his mother. She wanted him to do something he did not want to do, and he threatened her about calling the police and telling them that she beat him. She called me and was at the end of her rope. I love my son dearly, but I do not have custody of him, and as much of a point of contention that it was with my ex-wife and I, she was so fed up that she was ready to ship him out to me. As much as I would love to have my son, this was not the way I wanted it to happen. After a long talk with me, my son assured both me and his mother that he would never do this again (I’m VERY old fashioned, he got the point, crystal clear.)

For whatever reason, a section of our society has taken it upon themselves to take away our rights as parents. Now, disciplining your child may result in your arrest. The kids aren’t dumb. They get a hold of this like a dog with a bone, and they use it against their parents like a club. The parents are hopeless. The kids walk all over their parents. This creates kids like these 2 deranged “Goths” that murdered so many of their classmates and teachers in Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado.

The so-called “Trench Coat Mafia” came in to existence because parents are no longer allowed to be parents.

If a kid wants to wear certain disgusting cloths, pierce there body parts, dye their hair and walk around like a wannabe vampire, they can. They CAN because parents cannot say no. Parents cannot say no because we have agencies who will take these children away from their parents for any perceived wrong doing. I have the beginnings of a possible solution to the rising and horrible tide of violence and maladjustment in our young people:

1. These agencies help to cause this, and these agencies are completely worthless. They serve no purpose. They doubly serve in the same capacity that the police have always served. These agencies will INVENT issues in order to justify their own existence. It has been proven that this has happened innumberable times. We need to get rid of them completely.

2. Someone on the news last night postulated it, and it has been done on and off around the country for many decades, but I think we need to do it now: Simply enforce students in all schools, public or private, to wear uniforms, all the way through high school. In the military, your hair is part of your uniform. All boys must wear their hair off the collar and above the ears. No dyed hair, no pierced anything. Girls cannot dye their hair, cut it into weird shapes or pierce their body parts either. This takes away the tendency for kids with vastly different interests (or lack thereof) to group into like cliques. With this, you won’t be able to tell a jock from a nerd, or a Goth from a Prep. Neither will they.

3. For those who think “oh my, how terrible, you want to take away their individuality, what about their rights?…” Etc, ad nauseam. You know something, my kid has no rights other than what I give him. That’s the way it used to be, and that’s they way it needs to be again. If parents can be held legally responsible for the acts committed by their progeny, well then the parents need to get THEIR rights back and be allowed to be parents again. My kid has not earned the rights other than what I allow him to have. As far as “stifling their individuality” so be it. This goes back to the rights thing.

4. Curfews need to make a reemergence. When I was a teenager, we had a curfew in town. If you were out past the curfew, the police could pull you over, fine you, and take you home to your parents where the real trouble would start. (Naturally some kids who worked were permitted around these curfews).

When I was a teenager, all the way up through high school, I never once heard of someone ever bringing a gun to school (I graduated in 1983). I was a jock and reasonably popular. If someone would have done it, I would have heard about it. It didn’t happen then (maybe in some inner city areas, but these are the exceptions to the rule). It was inconceivable for kids to say to their friends “hey, lets go to school and murder a bunch of people with guns and explosives”. But of course then, if I had gotten too out of line, my dad would have put his foot down, right on my neck if need be, and put an end to any such idiocy. Today, my dad could get arrested for a lot less than that.

Our kids are out of control because we have taken the control away from the parents. We need to give it back to them. Our kids need no rights other than what is deemed as acceptable by their parents. Mind you, I understand that there are people with no business being parents. This is a problem that has been around since man stood upright. We’ve been able to deal with this. There are those small percentage of kids whose parents do abuse them, and we must deal with this simultaneously as best we can. But just as we have the government taking away our rights to privacy in just about everything, we have the government taking away our rights as parents.

We as a society cannot deal with these kids today, and the only way to gain back the ground we’ve lost is to give back the power and responsibility of parenting to those it belongs to: Not the Child Protective Services, NOT “the village”, but the parents who are trying against all odds to raise their kids. Until we do, our kids will not be safe.

-Eric

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