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Posted by: Art (artnscience-(at)-yahoo.com) on 3/26/1998@16:21hrs:
In Reply to: Some Opininions Of What Leads A Child To Violence VIA MSNBC.com posted by: Gina on 3/26/1998@15:25hrs:
This whole case has puzzled me. I may have come on sounding like I understood what was going on but I did not. My anger over the incident and assumptions I made from details I read caused me to be certain these kids were monsters or were so horribly affected by bad parenting that they were powerless to resist their violent urges. The news updates I read at the above links add more information to this, some of which lead me to believe that these kids were not respected as individuals in their homes. This statement from the grandfather of one of them makes reference to not taking kids seriously, "Golden shouldered part of the blame for his grandson’s actions. “Probably we should have been asking him when he had problems and if everything was all right ... Nobody takes a kid’s problems serious because they are kids, but to a kid, they are serious.”" Kids who are regarded as irrelevant or whose personal life is not important to his caregivers can harber tremendous rage. I keep talking about "respecting" our kids. This "respect" is manifested by listening to what they say and responding to that person to person, not Parent to child or relevant to irrelevant party. This respect also reflects the understanding that children are individuals who are responsible for the choices they make and can enjoy the consequences of those choices (good or bad). I think it will be very important to continue studying all the factors that allowed these kids to do what they did before leaping to judgement as I did earlier in this process. The same thing also holds for the apologists.