Topic : 10/12 Homecoming Shooting

Having lost my 22 y/o son I have great empathy for these families! My prayers are with them. On the show Dr Phil told kids to tell. In many instances it does no good for kids to tell because even now many schools do not listen. On Tuesday I removed my 9 y/o daughter from public school because she was the victim of relational bullying, from the superintendent's daughter.  Last year-she told, this year-we told the Superintendent has been quoted as saying, "He will loose no sleep over this". The principal said, "The Superintendent is a man he just doesn't get it". How can an educator in this day and age, not get it. Many kids who tell are blamed, ignored, labeled, further victimized by those sworn to protect them.  It is only after something happens-shootings, suicides that people-especially in small closed communities look to find why something has happened.  The schools have policies in place stating "bullying will not be tolerated" but for many children/parents it is just a piece of paper. Especially in a small community the response is dependent on who you are, and who you know.  You cannot advise kids to tell when in many communities telling falls on deaf ears, further hurting these children.

This is in response all those who blame guns and say guns are to blame. I have a gun an I will say that it could lay for years and not harm anyone. It takes a person to do that. This was a very infortunate and terrible thing to happen, but outlawing guns is not the answer. WHEN GUNS ARE OUTLAWED,ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS.

There are 60,000 die each yr from Doctors mistakes. Should we outlaw doctors ? Most kids only grow up nowdays, they are not raised. Put the blame where it belongs and enforce the laws that we already have

I haven't read all of the comments on the board, so I don't know if this has been addressed and I'm sure there are many who would disagree with me - but, I think that one source of violent behavior that should have been addressed is exposure to violence through tv/movies/and especially video games.  Children who have tvs/computers in their rooms tend to spend hours and hours of time isolated from others, often watching movies and/or playing games with high violent content.

Obviously, not all people who play violent video games are going to be violent, but playing violent video games, has been one common factor in shootings. (I don't know about the recent shooting however)  There have also been studies showing how high exposure to media violence affects brain activity.

In addition to the books mentioned on the show there are many great books/websites to get information on this topic:

http://www.sosparents.org/index.htm

Col. Dave Grossman's "Stop teaching our Kids to Kill"

There is also a pretty good curriculum offered by Stanford, that schools can implement that has success in this area:

http://notv.stanford.edu/

Mostly, it comes down to the fact that we must pay attention to what our children are doing.

I don't remember the exact percentages, but back during WWII only around 15% of soldiers could actually shoot 'the enemy', they had only practiced shooting targets.  After WWII they starting training soldiers using human silhouettes instead of plain targets - the percentage of soldiers in the Korean war (conflict??) who could shoot at a human increased dramatically - something like 80% (again, I don't remember the exact percentages).  Now - kids playing games like HALO-(any version), Manhunt (any version) and many others, are shooting 3-d images of people, get the sound, and bloody visual effects etc...And - they do not have the discipline that is drilled into people in the military. 

So - they have the developed the ability, but without the judgement, and many of them are isolated and picked on....obviously not all young people who play violent games/watch high levels of violence will be violent, but obviously young people can and do shoot others in cold blood....

Halo is rated M, basically what would be an NC-17 rating if it were a movie - how many years has your son been playing the Halo series?  I'm not saying he would be prone to any violent behavior, just pointing out that you, who seem to be a concerned/involved parent didn't take the rating into consideration, what about those kids whose parents don't pay attention at all??

I was watching the homecoming shooting show and was so sad.. there was a lot of responsibilty put on the schools in this show, probably because it was about SCHOOL shootings, but that frustrates me greatly.  I'm a school counselor in an elementary school, and these days everything is put on the teachers.  Raise the kids, feed them,  teach them how to behave, reward good behavior, punish and document every incident of bad behavior, ensure homework gets done (at school) AND teach them.  And hold down a second job because they don't pay us enough.  But parents in our society have no responsibility at all.  If their child is not succeeding in school, or acts out violently at school,or cheats or is disrespectful to the teacher or students,  it's because of something the teacher is not doing, never because the parents don't ensure homework is done, or the violence in the home, or the negligence in the home. I have seen several students come through my school who are incredibly violent and have the same type of suicidal, homicidal ideations the kids at Columbine did, and when I inform the parents, they get angry with me and blame it on the teachers, other kids, whoever they can blame it on.  I understand that that must be heartbreaking to hear that your child is thinking these things, but there is a parental responsibility to address it with kids.  There is only so much the school can do if the parents are alerted to the situation and refuse to do anything.  Unfortunately if these children act out on their violent tendencies, it will be "I told you so" at the expense of lives..  Most schools have a plan in place to identify students who are having such emotional difficulties, and I think we do a really good job with those kids, but unless the parents get them help, or do something about it, we can't do anything.  That's up to the parents, but there's no way we can assure they do that.  These kids are still allowed to come to school, even if they've admitted they are violent and angry or threaten violence.  There's a lot of protection for these kids, but none for potential victims.  And we still have to educate them.  We need to start holding parents responsible for raising their children and let the schools do their job and educate. 

We all try to make sense of these nightmares and identify causes.  When we face the fact that children learn what they are taught maybe we can move forward.  Being a child in this culture (and it is becoming a worldwide cult -ure) and observing the adults can only lead to one conclusion.  If you have a problem, violence will solve it.  Two countries disagree so we have a war and kill one another.  The country with the most horrible weapons and the most soldiers wins.  When there is a 'bad guy' send in the police and shoot him.  I have never known a child who wished to grow up and become the 'bad guy'.  Of course we have sick children.  Look at what we teach!!  We can continue to blame parents, schools, the children themselves but the fact remains that we are all responsible. The past allowed us to 'spin' our stories so that we were always the heros and right.  This is 2007 and every child has access to information on a day to day basis.  Shock and Awe.  We are getting plenty of that!  We must wake up and live the values we hope to offer the future.  When we decide to do this, it will require a lot of work from each of us. Today is a good day to begin.

I am of the opinion that media (tv/movies/games/etc.) doesn't cause violent behavior.  In  kiddos that exhibit extreme behaviors after such  media need to be limited or talked to about why they act they way they do.  My husband has played these games and has watched tv/movies that show violence all his life and I can tell you that these things don't effect his behavior but his past does. 

Second is that we had seen in an article that some off the students in Ohio had gone to the principle and she had written them off.  They tried to tell her what was going to happen and she said she didn't have the time to deal with it. 

I believe from my experience and my husbands that bullying in schools need to be addressed in a state that has never been adressed before.  Children are such social creatures as all humans are but it is more important to them then and I believe that we need to stress to our children that they don't know everything and that just because you think it is harmless teasing doesn't mean that isn't significant to the child they are teasing.  I want to become a teacher for a few reasons one of which is that I believe education is suffering from a lack of teachers and I want to provide a place for students to talk to someone openly.  I want to create a platform to stop bullying in school and get children to understand the hurt it causes.

The vioent crime in the countries where the guns have been taken from the citizens is extremely high. The criminals still have their guns and they know that the unarmed people around them are like sitting ducks. The right to bear arms in the US has nothing to do with what these students do.

Everyone has to blame someone...  so here is my soap box blame!!  i blame the government for all this!!  yea yea yea,  your all saying what does the government have to do with this right!!  Well my take is what happened to the stay at home moms?  Moms who would raise their children to become productive adults.

Government has left no choice for the women of today to work.  What American dream?  The house with a white picket fence,  two car garage, 2.5 kids with spot & kitty enjoying the children at play.  Well The house has become a condo with no fences to maintain ( we have to pay maintenance for that )  Two cars has become a necessity cause mom and dad are divorced and both work on either side of the spectrum, Spots become a pit bull to rip apart anyone who comes to the door,  and the kids are running a muck cause no one is home to even care who and what they're doing.  both parents have to work ( if you want to feed everyone )  not to mention your kids have to have the state of the art video game that costs boo coo bucks.  of course Sports aren't free any more if you want to sign your kids up to play after school.  Buying a bag of chips is cheaper then getting a gallon of milk to feed everyone making the obese rate out of control.

And the list goes on and on......  there are no more family times together or even family night where one child get's to pick the family activities for the evening.  if you had the above,  we wouldn't be worrying about guns being brought to schools cause moms would know every little thing that was going on in their child's life other then hearing it being broadcasted from the days news events!!!