Violence

We've had two more mass shootings recently. The one at the elementary school is just beyond belief. So many lives lost...so many children. There are so many thoughts and emotions running around inside my head...anger, grief, frustration, shock, disbelief. Heartache. Surely, everyone feels that. There are so many feelings and thoughts I could explore, but since I don't want to sit here in an emotional basket, I'm going to address something that annoys me. Blaming the parents. How can someone say the parents are to blame? Maybe it's because I have dealt too personally with people with mental issues...and it is the people closest that should be able to see, but are the least likely to believe, a person capable of such atrocities. The emotional attachments color what you see in their behavior. As I said, this comes from experience. And it isn't that you think that person is perfect, noooo, you know they are broken, but they'd never...until they do.

I am a mom. I had parents. My parents tried to raise me right, as I did my children. I'd guess most people would agree that their parents tried. But how many can say that they never, ever, did anything that their parents would have disapproved of? Never? Really? If not, you have lived a very sheltered life, or your parents were really liberal. I have to snicker at that comment, now that I think about it...my grandmother threw a fit because I went to Sunday school at a Baptist church when WE were Catholic. It seems it's an adult's job to disapprove of children's behavior and it is a child's job to test the limits of their imposed boundaries. If parents had absolute control of their children's behavior the world would be a perfect place full of quiet, polite, people. The world would be a dull place and we'd still be living in the stone age.

You can blame a parent when a toddler is running rampant in a restaurant. That parent should exercise control and teach the child preferred behavior. But once a child hits a certain age, where independence and freedom from constant supervision is reached, a parent can only hope that what they have taught their child will prevail in decision making.

I will also add that it is not easy to get help with mental health issues. Being a nurse, I have seen this from the inside. It is difficult to get a child into inpatient care. There are not enough beds. In emergency situations, read that as life threatening, I have seen them put a kid on a mattress, on the floor. Not an ideal situation. I hate to make the comparison, but a child in a psych facility is like have a petty criminal in prison. They learn from the more experienced and mimic their peers. As an adult, the situation is not much better. It is very difficult to have an adult committed against their will. And when you do, it's usually only for 72 hours.

I don't have the answers. There are no easy answers. There is also no easy culprit. You can't blame the gun, it's an inanimate object, a paperweight, until held in a hand. And on that note, I will say there is a difference in gun control and gun banishment. Every argument I hear, sounds like they are the same. Maybe it is the violence in today's entertainment. But there were killers long before video games. I just get tired of hearing the parents getting the blame. One of the things I do blame, is news. There is no quicker way to get famous, infamous maybe...but do they care about the difference? Their name and face are spread around the globe. I can't help visualizing some disturbed kid, sitting alone, thinking, they'll all know who I am when I am done. They'll all know my name. They'll never forget. The news needs to quit making these killers into celebrities.