School shooting du jour

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by BigV

I call bullshit.

It is not possible that someone intelligent enough to drive a computer can be dumb enough to believe that "when kids don't get arrested for writing in their journals, then school shootings happen". There is absolutely no overlap. You are clearly talking out your ass just to troll for attention, or some other ulterior motive. What you said is so utterly beyond the pale that I have to attribute it to some bizzare sad message-board-tourette's-variant. Nasty to witness, but completely devoid of content.

I call bullshit on your call of bullshit.

If parents aren't monitoring their children's behavior, and they are exhibiting signs (depressed, antisocial behavior over and beyond what a normal teenager exhibits, writing violent and other harmful thoughts in a journal or on the internet) of impending violence, and the parents aren't doing their job parenting, then this shit happens. Period.

This child was 16 (or 17, I've seen both), a nazi, posting about doing violence to former schoolmates, and already in homeschooling. The child was kicked out of school (of course, the school can't discuss why, but the article I saw the principle didn't even know why). If the child was already kicked out of school once, that's a sign your child has problems.

Should you EXPECT your child to go kill 12 people? No. But if you're seeing red flags, and you do not parent your child, this type of thing happens.

I have a 17 year old male child, who exhibits loner, anti-social behavior and does not play well with others at school. His grades are average. I know where he is at all times. Period. He has a cell phone and keeps it with him. He's never been at trouble in school, other than his grades. His biological father is a murderer, and I am aware that this sort of behavior may be partly genetic in nature.

If I *wasn't* paying attention to his behavior, his mood, his whereabouts, where his friend lives, looking at the history on his IE, checking his pictures on the computer, monitoring his notebooks for dark or disturbing art, checking his backpack, things like that, then I would not be doing my job as a parent.

Parents who "gee, I didn't see this coming" weren't paying attention.

What OC said in this post, however, was way past that. Go read it. I paraphrase: Parents read journals and cops arrest kids or people die in schools.

Indirectly, that's what I said, yes. But to clarify your paraphrase, Parents read journals and DO NOTHING ABOUT IT and people die in schools.

How they handle it depends on the parent, obviously, but dismissing it, attributing violent "stories" and "thoughts" clearly written down in such a way that the police feel the child is a danger to themselves or others simply to "independant thought", is potentially lethal.

Whoa... not just disturbing, but so freakin wrong, factually wrong that I called bullshit. It seemed like a knee jerk reaction--"That shooter, damn shame his parents didn't have him arrested and save us all this tragedy."

Absolutely. The child was throwing off red flags all over the place, and nothing was done (at least as far as the media has reported). No therapy. No counseling. Loner. Anti-social. Nazi. Writing violent remarks regarding former schoolmates on a forum-type setting. Access to unlocked, unsafe, guns in the home and ammunition. Absent parents, one suicide and one mental. HELLO???? Where was the parenting??

Sure. Arrest them all, and then the schools will be free of death. It will have moved to the prisons.

Arrest them all with just cause. Not just BEcause.

Better a prison than my kids' school.

If there's one thing OC get's around here is plenty of attention.

Mostly negative....