Blame the Parents

Blame the Parents

You may have seen on the television in 2011 a video taken by a child's cell phone camera of a father yelling and cursing at children on a school bus because his daughter, who is stricken with cerebral palsy, was being bullied by her classmates on the bus.

The father was arrested, reached an agreement with prosecutors, then publicly apologized for his behavior. The man will not have to spend any time in prison for his actions, but one of the conditions of his plea deal is that he has to take anger management classes.

If you are assuming I am complaining that the man did not receive punishment that fits the crime, you could not be more wrong. I am in the man's corner 100%.

According to the report I saw on The Early Show on CBS, children had been hitting his daughter with pens & pencils, taunting her and one child even spit on her. It is important that I make sure you did not miss anything in the first paragraph. His daughter is stricken with cerebral palsy.

Everyone has probably heard "children can be cruel", but I do not remember children being as cruel when I was growing up as they are today. Comparing today's school bullies to the bullies I had to deal with when I was growing up makes the bullies of my school years look like pansies.

Today we have the Internet, which allows people to have "contact" with other people even when they are not "in contact" with other people.  Facebook is a quintessential example of "contact without contact". There are other sites on the Internet that allow the same contact, although the sites are not as well known as the aforementioned sites.

Referring back again to my childhood, at least when I left the school bus to walk to my house, there was no way for the bullies to continue bullying me. Home was safe. It was my parents' castle, and I was safe in their castle. But that is not true today.

When bullies get off the bus and go home, the bullying doesn't stop.  They can get on the Internet and continue bullying with more devastating results than they realize.  By using the Internet, they can bully anonymously and make the bullying visible to an entire world! There no longer is a castle, a safe haven for bullied and abused children.

When it was time for me to go back to school, I was afraid the bullies would start their bullying again when I got to school. More often than not, that is what happened.  This would give me reason to play sick at home or play hooky. I could avoid the bullying if I wanted to avoid it.  The children of today cannot escape the bullying. They cannot find that safe haven where the bullying stops.

So, why does the bullying continue? Why do these bullying children continue to bully others day after day?  Why is there no end to the bullying even after a child returns home?

There is a plethora of explanations why the bullying never ends; as many reasons as there are people in the world. But I submit there is only one reason and, although it is easily targeted, it is a deep-rooted reason that will require generations to change.

The parents are the sole reason why this bullying, this abhorrent behavior, continues in their children.  I will not accept excuses that accuse video games, movies, the Internet and so on of perpetuating the bullying. The bullying will only end when parents take the responsibility of raising their children the way God wants parents to raise their children. If parents parented as if Jesus was present and visible to them 24 hours a day, I wonder how many parents would continue raising their children as they do now in this society; in this age, and wonder how many would curse in the presence of their children.

My parents both had jobs before I was born. My mother quit working after I was born and did not return to working until after my second brother was born, six years after my birth. When my mother decided it was time for her to return to work, my parents hired a maid/nanny to take care of us until my parents returned home for the evening. That lasted until I was twelve, at which point my parents thought me "grown up" enough to take care of myself and two brothers from the time we got home from school until the time my parents got home from work.

At that time, there was no such thing as a "latch key kid". That was a term that had not yet been invented. Being alone for those few hours was a minimal risk, since my parents spent my first twelve years teaching my siblings and me good manners and taking us to Sunday School and church every Sunday.

My parents took an active role in raising their children responsibly and with God in the center.  I do not find that to be the case with the parents of the past two generations, at least. Parents have taken a less involved role in raising their children and in keeping track of what their children do. Parents allow television, the Internet, and cell phones to be the babysitters of choice.

Saying "sir" and "ma'am" to my parents, not to mention to the rest of the world, was one of my parents' pet peeves.  I would say those words so often that it just became habit to do so. If you listen to children and even adults today, to hear one say "sir" or "ma'am" is extremely rare.

Why do you think that is? It is because parents do not bother to teach their children to say those words, or even to show respect to others, including the parents themselves.  Parents are so concerned with being their children's best friends that they have forgotten they are not their children's friends but their parents!

It doesn't matter how many video games the children play or how much time they spend on the Internet when it comes to parenting. If the parents would be parents and teach their children to respect and honor them and other people, video games and the Internet would not be an issue.  The children would learn to honor and respect their parents and others and would also learn there is a block of time to use the Internet and video games and when that time is used up, it is time to put those things away.

What kind of parent(s) would have a child that abuses, torments and bullies another child who is suffering with cerebral palsy?  Just who are the parents in that family?  Mr. Television?  Mrs. Grand Theft Auto? Mr. & Mrs. Facebook?

I support the parent who launched a tirade on the school bus. I am certain most of the children don't get a good scolding at home when they deserve one, nor do they get a good spanking. I was spanked a few times when I was growing up, and at no time did I ever think I was being abused. I deserved a spanking and got one.  The spankings taught me I had done wrong, was caught, punished, and I better not do it again.

What is even more tragic about this story is that the parents of the bullying children never came forward to apologize to the father of the cerebral palsy child. The very fact that none of the parents of the guilty children came forward is a clear testimony that those parents do not have the moral character to be parents.

To hell with letting electronic media raise children. The time is way overdue for parents to assume a participatory role in raising their children and putting the electronic nannies to rest.

If you, as a consenting adult, decided to have children, then you must also decide to be a parent who will raise children to be respectful toward others and who will obey the law. Failing to assume the moral responsibilities of raising children is an admission that the adults are immature and not morally ready to assume the life-long task of having and raising a child.

Every one of the children who abused and tormented that young girl deserves to be taken out to the woodshed and given a good spanking. Not a beating--a spanking. Maybe both the parent and child will learn something from the experience.

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