Since the teenager in Isle Vista intentionally ran down and killed those four people and the 15-year-old shot his classmates at Santee High School I’ve seen a lot of headlines such as, “Parents Ask, Why?” “School Officials Search for Answers” and “Why So Many Troubled Teens?” Allow me to enlighten an apparently benighted world with a short list of reasons.
1. Listen to the music. Hate, sex, anger, violence, intolerance and no rhythm to boot. Not very uplifting or enriching. When all the sludge settles to the bottom Hollywood gives awards for the most perverse.
2. Indiscriminate abortion. If you don’t think wholesale destruction of the unborn cheapens everyone’s life then you’re way too far gone yourself.
3. T.V. One look at the mind-numbing, spiritually vacuous garbage Hollywood spews over our children and I’m amazed children aren’t hurling themselves over cliffs in lemming-like droves.
4. Both parents working long hours trying to stay afloat in our “wonderful” economy. It now takes two wage-earners to obtain the same standard of living that one did a generation ago. The way the “real” cost of living is going up it’s only going to get worse and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for parenting.
5. Corrupt politicians as role models for children. The media has made sound bites, appearance, soothing words and theatrics more important in the election process than honor, wisdom, fidelity to duty, substance, and common sense. The public demands glib mediocrity and we certainly get it.
6. Video games where kids can actually practice murdering their neighbors and classmates.
7. Religion shoved into the dark corners of our society, no public displays. Treat God kind of like pornography: you can believe, but keep it to yourselves.
8. Divorce. Kids need security. They need to know vows and promises actually mean something permanent and sacred. Parents need to work at marriage, not merely change partners when the glow wears off. We owe it to our kids to try harder.
9. Stop making “supervision” and “discipline” dirty words. We tried it Dr. Spock’s way. It’s time to give our grandfathers’ methods another look. How many body piercings, tattoos, hair color changes, scrapes with the law or school authorities, drug and alcohol episodes, fights, teen pregnancies and other destructive activities will it take for us to admit that, just maybe, we’re a little too permissive?
10.Take the car keys away. Nobody drives until they graduate from high school or turn 18. I think you might see a decline in gang shootings, drunken driving, teen pregnancy, teenage driving deaths, drug and alcohol use, cruising and the drop-out rate, not to mention pollution reduction, lowered dependence on foreign oil and less traffic congestion. Another benefit might be that parents would actually spend more time with their teenagers if they couldn’t simply just toss the car keys at them.
11. Movies. Can anyone defend the stuporous, vile crap Hollywood churns out in the name of “entertainment”? As they say when referring to computers, “Crap in, crap out.” The same thing is obviously true with young and impressionable minds.
12. Drugs, prescription and otherwise. When we think of drug pushers and kids a picture comes to mind of sleek cars with tinted windows and teenagers crowded about and leaning into and passing cash through partially opened windows. But what of the drugs that are delivered to our children in gleaming offices and medical centers throughout the country? Do hundreds of thousands of our young people truly need drugs to cope? Or perhaps is it simply easier for parents and teachers to cope with kids who are drugged? I think we need to reevaluate the rampant use of prescription medications on children and send those who purvey street drugs to our children away to some unpleasant place for a long time.
Now the obvious question is, “Do we really not know why our children are troubled or do we merely pretend we don’t because the solutions aren’t easy?”
Richard Schaefer