Just how well do you know your kids??

[HelpDeskHustler]

I'm not talking traditional year-round school. I'm talking like legitimate year round school. Occasionally there will be like a day off, but this would be serious business, the more breaks you give, the more chances you offer for regression or the last topic discussed to not stick like it should.

[cyberthrasher_706]

Well, I have to agree with Vike, even though I just skimmed it (just got off work and didn't feel like reading it all). While reading it one thing did come to mind regarding parents involvement. I think it's important for the parents to take an active role in the settling of childhood disputes, but not to do it for them. There was an instance a while back where one of my neighbors had told me that another neighbor that I had never met wanted to speak with me about my son kicking his daughter in the stomach at school. We spoke with the dad, found out that his daughter had warned him about getting angry toward us and violent (which he wouldn't have, just probably threatened it out of anger) because of me. Her words were "dad, you don't want to start anything. Do you know who his dad is!!?" Needless to say I kinda have a reputation for being a mean prick and I'm a huge biker so that doesn't help much. Back to the point. We talked to him, found out his side of the story from what his daughter had told him, went and talked to our son and got his side of it, than put them both in the same room together to talk it out with all of us adults as mediators. Now they're really close friends and we can hardly pry them apart. The main source of the problem turned out to be another kid in our complex who fits the description of the parentless troublemaker who's going to jail soon. He actually told our son that he doesn't have to listen to us and that he can go ahead and do whatever he wants and steal from us if he wants to, etc..... I'm sure you guys can imagine. My point is problems between kids can be solved with parental intervention as long as the parents aren't just out for revenge and justice. The point is to teach our children how to be responsible adults and to give them the tools to do it without anger and violence. Hell, if I can do it with our son (I'm his step father and his real father is a violent drug addict that encouraged him to hit his mother and sister and break the law) than you can do it with any kid if it's done right. Everyone's situation is different though so I'm not saying I'm completely right and others are wrong.

I also have something to say about the media aspect and the fact that everything they learn is from the media. Humans are trained from a very young age through a system of "filters" that teach us how to view the world around us. These filters are built up from our parents influence's, religions, cultural background, education, everything. My point is, due to these environmental filters that make us who we are, two kids can watch the same thing and experience the same things in life and both of them will end up different because of their view of it all from behind these filters. That's why some kids can watch tv and see fantasy where others see the real world. Just some rambling thoughts.

In regards to the issue at hand, I don't think they should let the kids off at all. If they had the mentality to plan it in depth like this than they had the mentality to do it. Like my wife said when she read it, "they were obviously smart enough to know that they weren't big enough to do it alone, that's why they had a group of them doing it so they would me more likely to succeed." In the article they said that most kids wouldn't act on anger that long after the fact but these kids were armed and ready with a battle plan. If these kids are let off than it will set a terrible precidense [sp?] for all cases of school violence. OK, I'm done with my rant now.