Bullies

You know what gets me on the whole Phoebe Prince thing? Everyone being surprised that kids are so savage. Really? You didn't know that? PARENTS are surprised? What have YOU been doing instead of watching your kids.

"Lord of the Flies" wasn't just a fiction book. Children, left to their own devices, are savage little creatures. Reading any serious cognitive development time line would tell you that. WE were all little savages as kids. It's up to our parents to steer us in appropriate directions. Criminalizing a bunch of kids that are cognitively incapable of judging the long term effects of their current behavior is ridiculous. You educate these kids to show them the long term effects of teenage pregnancy, drunk driving, etc and yet they are supposed to be criminally responsible for not knowing the consequences of picking on people? That's just ONE thing wrong with the whole picture. You hold the school accountable, you hold the parents accountable, and may look into why Phoebe felt suicide was a more viable option than trusting her parents to protect her, even through removing her from school if necessary?

Some say what if this was your kid...well it was my kid. You do recall I homeschool right? That's one reason why I do so. My kid wouldn't suicide, she'd do exactly what she did: Tell Mom because mom would put it right, one way or the other. My kids trust me to defend them.

I know, intimately, the negative effects of bullying. TV has nothing to do with it. WE, not tv, but WE as a society, show our kids acceptable behavior. Society is not tv, society is a collective of individuals. TV should never be quoted as an excuse because if you taught your children properly the difference between tv and reality. They can watch all the violence they want and not BE violent. So easy to blame tv so we don't look to ourselves.

Bullying is done by our politicians, our religious, our scientific. We bully scientists into giving the results we want (or we'll yank your funding). We bully each other religiously (or you'll go to hell, lose your job, become a social pariah). We bully each other by class status and political belief, we bully each other constantly in the real every day world. Now I'm not talking about all laws, but the law is used to bully. Smoke and you get a ticket (it's still a legal activity and thus this is simply bullying, if you really cared you'd make it illegal). You do it when a democrat says "health bill or you don't care if people die". You do it when a Republican says "follow the bible or you'll go to hell AND you don't care about the US". You do it when you insinuate that you don't love children if you don't throw yourself wholeheartedly into whatever bullshit the media says about FOR THE CHILDREN. Hell, the US does it constantly as a nation. So many parents believe the US is the greatest nation ever and our kids see that and see our behavior, you can hardly fault them for emulating the greatest nation ever.

We are a society of bullies. We bully when we let our opinions over ride fact and then use whatever means to intimidate others into changing how they feel. Just as someone has said I must not care about the children or this girl's death because I don't think the other kids should be criminalized. Therapy, you bet your ass, criminalized no. The school definitely failed in their job and go after them with my blessing. It's not that I don't care, but I do think that bullying the bullies is hardly the correct response. They learned this is ok from somewhere, even if it was only their parents failure to instruct them. Perhaps it would be better if we all quit bullying each other and show our children better behavior?