Friday 14 December 2012

Not Beady...But Definitely on My Mind

It never fails to horrify me, the lengths people will go to to hurt others.  To damage -beyond repair- 27 families, is just incomprehensible.  And children to top it all off.  I can't help but wonder what leads to these events.

Is it a mental disorder (I am thinking yes)?  Is it an anger management issue?  Yet, there are also differences between Canada and the US and their respective fire arms laws, but it has to start somewhere else.  This person did not decide to pick up a gun and ruin 27 families BECAUSE he could get his hands on a gun.  Sure that facilitated the tragedy, but is not the ultimate cause of it.

This kind of behavior, if not caused by a severe mental disorder, must stem from something or sometime or somewhere.  Is it because of the feeling of entitlement that all of our youth exhibit in this generation?  I see it in my own teenagers.  As parents, it is our job to ensure our children understand why this is NOT the way go about life.

Increasingly, this becomes more difficult  for us as parents.  I worry what will become of future generations, if we as parents of this generation can not get a handle on this attitude. 

You can roll your eyes, and shake your head when I mention that...as kids, we were not allowed to have this kind of attitude...but it is so true!  When did this feeling of entitlement become the norm, the standard, and the expected?

In the grand scheme of things, I have good children, and my husband and I work hard to keep it this way.  BUT there are still these feelings and attitudes from my children that we try and discourage.  What did we do as parents, educators, doctors, psychologists and politicians to enable these thoughts and behaviors?

Is it because we empowered them, gave them the tools to stand up for themselves, and taught them how not to be the little guy anymore?  I shudder to think that this has caused such evil and tragedy.

Or is it because we stopped having them take responsibility for their own actions?  At some point, we shifted the onus of responsibility away from the self and onto someone or something else.  I believe this may have played a huge part in some of the evil we see today.  Maybe not all of it, and maybe not this specific instance, but definitely a large part. 

We will probably never know what was in this young man's mind today as he went about his evil chores, but at the very least, can we as parents, educators, politicians, psychologists, and doctors at least do an assessment of what we have taught our children, and how it may have played its own part in some of these horrifying events?