Are Some Children Just Evil, Or Are Their Parents To Blame?
This is an internal debate that I have with myself whenever I read about children/teens committing violent acts against other children/teens.
Two boys aged ten and 11 are being questioned after two other youngsters were seriously injured in an attack. One boy was left with life-threatening head injuries and another was slashed with a knife.
The critically-injured boy, aged 11, was found semi-conscious at the bottom of a ravine while the nine-year-old with knife wounds was found wandering along a street “dazed” and covered in blood, witnesses said.
Two boys who were found near the scene in Edlington, South Yorkshire were taken into police custody.
Since the abduction and murder of James Bulger back in the early nineties, the number of young teens committing adult crimes seem to have risen sharply. Whereby once upon a time, we’d have been shocked to hear about violent acts commited by young children/teens, sadly, these days, it just seems to be par for the course.
I don’t think that parents are solely to blame, but I certainly think that a large portion of the blame can and should be levelled at them.
I also blame a society that seems to be getting slacker and slacker at disciplining kids.
Back when I was a child, if I did anything wrong at school, I knew that I’d have my parents to deal with, and their punishment would be much harsher than anything I experienced at school, so I kept my nose clean. The same can be said for my siblings. It really was no accident that all of us grew up to be law-abiding, decent human beings.
I also think that we’ve turned into a society that makes too many excuses for our kids. So many kids these days don’t know how to cope with failure and rejection. For instance, a boy gets grounded by his parents, so he shoots them. A boy gets smacked by his parents, so he shoots his dad, and his dad’s friend. Parents refuse to buy their child the latest X-Box, so he sets the house on fire. A boy gets jealous over the arrival of a new baby, so he shoots his father’s pregnant fiancee. A girl wont date a boy in her class, so he beats her up and rapes her. Some teens are bored one day, so they decide to rape a thirteen year old girl.
I know that these things aren’t happening on a daily, or even monthly basis, but they are definitely happening more frequently than they ought to be.
Here’s a timeline of some of the shootings that have been perpetrated by kids and young teens:
October 2007: A teenage gunman reportedly shoots and wounds five people at a high school in Cleveland, Ohio, before killing himself.
April 2007: At least 32 people are killed in two shooting incidents in the campus of Virginia Tech university in Virginia.
September 2006: Gunman in Colorado shoots and fatally wounds a teenage schoolgirl, then kills himself; two days later a teenager kills the headteacher of a school in Cazenovia, Wisconsin
November 2005: Student in Tennessee shoots dead an assistant principal and wounds two other administrators
March 2005: Minnesota schoolboy kills nine, then shoots himself
April 2003: Teenager shoots dead head-teacher at a Pennsylvania school, then kills himself
March 2001: Pupil opens fire at a school in California, killing two students
February 2000: Six-year-old girl shot dead by classmate in Michigan (What the f*ck?)
November 1999: Thirteen-year-old girl shot dead by a classmate in New Mexico
May 1999: Student injures six pupils in shoot-out in Georgia
April 1999: Two teenagers shoot dead 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves at Columbine School in Colorado
June 1998: Two adults hurt in shooting by teenage student at high school in Virginia
May 1998: Fifteen-year-old boy shoots himself in the head after taking a girl hostage
May 1998: Fifteen-year-old shoots dead two students in school cafeteria in Oregon
April 1998: Fourteen-year-old shoots dead a teacher and wounds two students in Pennsylvania
March 1998: Two boys, 11 and 13, kill four girls and a teacher in Arkansas
December 1997: Fourteen-year-old boy kills three students in Kentucky
October 1997: Sixteen-year-old boy stabs mother, then shoots dead two students at school in Mississippi, injuring several others
And the list goes on. Obviously most of the above incidents have taken place in America, (I tend to blame the gun culture in America for the number of shootings there), but here in England, children/teens killing/hurting other teens/children have been steadily increasing. In 2008 alone, there were around 28 teenagers who were killed by their peers. This is a horrendous number, and it doesn’t seem to be improving.
In my opinion, if your child is out on the street when he should be in bed, he will get into trouble. If your child is hanging around with wild, unruly children, he will be lead astray. If a child isn’t taught that all actions have consequences, he wont think twice about breaking the law. If a child isn’t taught how to cope with failure and rejection while he’s young, then one day, his frustrations may spill out in a deadly manner. If a child grows up with an entitlement complex, he may one day decide to rape a girl who rejects him. If a child is taught how to shoot a gun, and is given free and easy access to one, one day, he may decide to use it on somebody he doesn’t like. Or a lot of somebodies who he doesn’t like.
All of the above are things that all parents should be able to influence, this is not rocket science. Parents can, and should be the difference between whether their children end up doing time for murder, and living a healthy, normal life, so in this respect, I think parents should take the brunt of the blame. But then again, aren’t some kids just born evil?
What say you?
Posted by Karen Scott · 
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