Another school shooting! (parent, learn, kid, family)

[ayannaaaliyah]

Originally Posted by mbuszu

The kid's mother bought the 9mm rifle for her 14 year old son just a couple weeks ago (on the news today). She has just been arrested for doing this. Of course taking a look at her via a picture a whole lot of unpolitically correct things come to my mind but to say that from her appearance I'm not surprised is accurate.

Gun control laws would be useless and would just take away the rights of law-abiding citizens to arm & defend themselves (debated to death in many forums - let's not go there folks). I suppose you could lock down schools - making entry into them more secure... but I wonder if that can be done with minimal intrusiveness. I'm all for having a weapon-free environment in schools... much like in government buildings today.

I cannot help but wonder if the change that needs to happen needs to be at home though... obviously this type of violence and acceptance of it starts at home. I have few ideas except ones which fundamentally strip liberties so I am not excited about them at all (obvious ideas I've heard before include: setting an age requirement or removing/regulating violence from video games, fiction-tv, music and movies).

That's a different case where the parents brought the gun (Pennsylvania). The one the OP is talking about took place in Ohio.

[citybythebay]

This boy, Asa Coon, came from a very troubled past.
He lived in an environment of abuse and neglect.
Neighbors have come forward telling of eyewitness accounts of the
abuse that was taking place in this child's home.

Not to mention that he was also tormented on a daily basis from his classmates.
Nobody knows what was going on with this kid and that
is the shame in all of this.

I am angry because no one reaches out to these children that come from
a home full of neglect and abuse. No one knows what goes on behind
closed doors and I think that needs to stop! People need to stop looking the other way!
Otherwise, stories like this will only continue.

This all could have been prevented if this child had the proper intervention.
I believe situations like this can be prevented if people would only
reach out and take action to help these children.

Reminds me of the VA Tech shooter. Another person with a troubled
past and no one stepped in...things need to change.

[ElizabethMarie]

quote:ayannaaaliyah; "Kids these days have a LACK OF RESPECT, period. They don't respect their parents, they don't respect authority, and most of all they have no respect for themselves."

As horrendous as it is that here we have yet another school shooting, it can't really be a surprise to anyone, can it? The whole, all-around "LACK OF RESPECT" thing, absolutely true. But respect isn't an instictive behavior, it's learned. Kids these days don't even know what respect is because they don't have parents there to teach them. With every passing generation people become more and more self-involved. A hundred years ago parents raised their own kids. They didn't rely on nannies or sociaty or after-school programs to do it for them. They didn't put parenting on hold because they "still had things they wanted to accomplish" or to "get ahead in their career" and then say it was so they could "give their kids the life they didn't have." Who cares if you grew up poor?! Did you go shooting classmates because they picked on you? Or did you have parents that actually PUNISHED you for getting bad grades, pulling your sister's hair, or giving your mom attitude. Did you have a family that actually ate dinner together, or went to the park on weekends to play baseball? People these days are just plain selfish. They want what THEY want and parenting is just somethng that's slowing them down. "Punished," now there's a word that doesn't get nearly enough consideration. I'm only 22, and when I was a kid if I talked back to my mom or dad I got slapped. Now-a-days kids can get taken away for things like that, but you know what? I never talked back to my parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, anyone. I still don't. If I came home 10 minutes after curfew my "phone privileges" weren't taken away, my "going-out privileges" were. These days, consequnces are almost non-existant. If I ever hear of my kids picking on another child, they will be pulled out of school and home-schooled until they can learn to treat people with respect. None of this "three strikes" garbage. Why should a child that KNOWS right from wrong be given the opportunity to do something three times before they get punished for it? If parents actually held their kids accountable for the things they did rather than defending them all the time we wouldn't have other children so tormented that they feel the need to just "off" everyone. I know a man who's wife was cheating on him with another married man, and when his wife found out, she drove an hour and a half to get to her husband's mistress and shot her in the head. It was catergorized a "Crime of Passion" and she was sentenfed to FOUR YEARS IN PRISON. The MAX she could have been sentenced to was SEVEN. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! Beside that, driving an hour and a half with a gun sure sounds like "Pre-Meditated" to me. Our children don't respect because they have no fear of consequences. And why should they when this is the example we're giving them. We should be ashamed.

[austinsmom]

Originally Posted by ElizabethMarie

quote:ayannaaaliyah; "Kids these days have a LACK OF RESPECT, period. They don't respect their parents, they don't respect authority, and most of all they have no respect for themselves."

As horrendous as it is that here we have yet another school shooting, it can't really be a surprise to anyone, can it? The whole, all-around "LACK OF RESPECT" thing, absolutely true. But respect isn't an instictive behavior, it's learned. Kids these days don't even know what respect is because they don't have parents there to teach them. With every passing generation people become more and more self-involved. A hundred years ago parents raised their own kids. They didn't rely on nannies or sociaty or after-school programs to do it for them. They didn't put parenting on hold because they "still had things they wanted to accomplish" or to "get ahead in their career" and then say it was so they could "give their kids the life they didn't have." Who cares if you grew up poor?! Did you go shooting classmates because they picked on you? Or did you have parents that actually PUNISHED you for getting bad grades, pulling your sister's hair, or giving your mom attitude. Did you have a family that actually ate dinner together, or went to the park on weekends to play baseball? People these days are just plain selfish. They want what THEY want and parenting is just somethng that's slowing them down. "Punished," now there's a word that doesn't get nearly enough consideration. I'm only 22, and when I was a kid if I talked back to my mom or dad I got slapped. Now-a-days kids can get taken away for things like that, but you know what? I never talked back to my parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, anyone. I still don't. If I came home 10 minutes after curfew my "phone privileges" weren't taken away, my "going-out privileges" were. These days, consequnces are almost non-existant. If I ever hear of my kids picking on another child, they will be pulled out of school and home-schooled until they can learn to treat people with respect. None of this "three strikes" garbage. Why should a child that KNOWS right from wrong be given the opportunity to do something three times before they get punished for it? If parents actually held their kids accountable for the things they did rather than defending them all the time we wouldn't have other children so tormented that they feel the need to just "off" everyone. I know a man who's wife was cheating on him with another married man, and when his wife found out, she drove an hour and a half to get to her husband's mistress and shot her in the head. It was catergorized a "Crime of Passion" and she was sentenfed to FOUR YEARS IN PRISON. The MAX she could have been sentenced to was SEVEN. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! Beside that, driving an hour and a half with a gun sure sounds like "Pre-Meditated" to me. Our children don't respect because they have no fear of consequences. And why should they when this is the example we're giving them. We should be ashamed.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but take issue with some of it too. Yes parents need to set limits and PUNISH children. Kids aren't taught respect or resist being taught (someone on a forum said they were taught they just don't feel they have to respect until it's earned which in some cases I can see). I read all the posts about getting rid of corporal punishment, not sitting kids apart at lunch, etc. PARENTS need to learn that children are not made out of glass and will not break! Some need to be paddled to get the message and some need to be embarrassed to get the message. They won't die from either of these things. I don't agree with shaking, biting, or throwing things at them but paddling is NOT abuse. But their dear little self esteems will be crushed if we do anything to hurt their feelings so many do nothing. STOP being friends and be PARENTS. I don't buy the getting picked on excuse either. Kids have been picked on since the dawn of time and until the recent past, they didn't go out and shoot up a school over it. They went out and made something of themselves, came back to the reunion and shocked the crap out of everyone there! And the most important thing that would help, STOP HAVING BABIES YOU CAN'T or WON'T TAKE CARE OF SO YOU CAN GET MONEY OUT OF THE WELFARE SYSTEM!!! Use birth control so kids like these shooters are brought up in abusive homes with parents who are doing their thing. And about that point. Glad you have the option to pull you kids out and home school but most of us can't and don't want to do that. I work because I have to. I'm glad so many people on here have husbands pulling down enough to allow them to stay home. Mine doesn't. We actually are very close salary wise so guess what? I work. I'd love to be able to pick my son up from school and help him with his homework, but I can't. That doesn't mean that he doesn't know what is expected of him. The kids doing the shooting have deep mental issues that should have been caught. School nurses split their time b/w several schools. Unless their behavior was such that teachers could pick up on it, how would anyone really know? Some of their parents wouldn't care or would tell them their crazy so it wouldn't help. It's a scary thing to send your kid out the door everyday but most of us have to.

[Mom2Feebs]

Wow, I mean, what kind of complete coward do you have to be to copy someone else's murder-suicide for your own? You already ARE a coward when you bow out of life in such a manner, but what goes through your head? You're watching the coverage of Virginia Tech and what are you thinking? "Wow, that looks cool, that's how I'm going to go out?" Jeez man, come up with your own original idea for crying out loud, if you're gonna do it. Grow some cojones. Go off the Empire State Building or jump out of a plane with no parachute. But copying someone else's shootout? What a complete pansy and a failure.

[charolastra00]

Maybe the reason my generation has no respect is we get no respect from adults? I was lucky that my parents respected me. Had they not, who knows how my brother and I would have turned out. Respect is a two way street. If there's respect and openness between parents and children, the children have NO NEED to go out and rebel or sulk away depressed in their rooms with no one to reach out to until it reaches a boiling point. Respect doesn't mean a parent is the "friend" of their child or that there's no punishment (although I personally think spanking is the highest form of disrespect and had my parents ever spanked me, we would NEVER have the relationship we have now.. they had effective ways of discipline that did not involve violence or intimidation), it just means that children are valued as people.

It also has NOTHING to do with violence in tv, movies, and videogames in of themselves. Parents need to put them in context but it seems like too many parents completely shield their kids from this kind of thing. There was recently a shooting next to my school in a building full of teenage runaways. Maybe had these parents raised their children with violent media and then SHOWN them the results would some of these cases been different.

The most violent, out of control kids growing up came from the families with the stay at home moms, strict disciplinarian, church going families. Those were the kids who were in and out of rehab all through middle and high school. Who knows what was going on behind closed doors.

Most kids who act out violently have already learned to not trust adults. No adult steps in when a kid is being bullied. No adult steps in when a kid is practically begging for mental help. No adult steps in when a kid is obviously in trouble. When these school shootings happen, so often it's because all the adults in a child's life have failed them- parents, teachers, school counselors, bus drivers, everyone. For some, this leads to self mutilation, drugs, anorexia, bulimia, and other ways that they perceive as controlling their own bodies. For others, they shoot up schools. Loose cannons don't just come out of nowhere.

[sbd78]

Most of these school shooters have severe mental problems. It has been revealed that this gunman was on medication which he stopped taking over the past few weeks and began behaving erratically. Its important to take people with mental problems seriously and get them help. Unfortunately, this gunman was 27-years-old, and you can't force an adult to get treatment if they don't want it. I don't know what the answer is?

[mommabear2]

I can only suspect that the killer was mentally ill... why else would someone do such a thing? Our society has a way of ignoring people who "act kind of funny." I've gone to school with people who acted inappropriately - talking to themselves, ranting on totally out their topics - basically being "crazy." I don't think people know what to do about the mentally ill... sometimes they need to be isolated from society if there are signs that they are seriously disturbed (like the Virginia Tech murderer... hello... the guy was obviously in need of some serious help... he was ignored). Ignoring these people and hoping for the best is - obviously - not the answer.

[austinsmom]

Actually the majority of the shooter DON'T have mental illness. Check out this thread //www.city-data.com/forum/educa...shootings.html on the education forum. InformedConsent posted a link to a very interesting collection of articles about earlier school shootings and the shooters. Sorry if the link doesn't work. I haven't figured all the stuff out on here yet.

[texastea]

Originally Posted by mommabear2

sometimes they need to be isolated from society if there are signs that they are seriously disturbed (like the Virginia Tech murderer... hello... the guy was obviously in need of some serious help... he was ignored). Ignoring these people and hoping for the best is - obviously - not the answer.

Exactly!!! And his family knew he needed help. Parents need to quit denying/ignoring problems like this and move heaven and earth to get their kid some help before they're 18 and unleashed on society.