Last week, a 16 year old honor student was beaten to death on his way home from school. The child was an innocent bystander who go caught in the middle of a fight between to gangs (they are described as “factions” in a newspaper report.) An amateur video found all over the net shows the attack.
As parents of teens, we have to face the facts that it is nearly impossible to keep our children safe from the violence around them. Angry students plan attacks on their schools. Student shoot and beat each other on school buses and on the streets outside of schools, random violence happens in our neighborhood.
Even when our kids manage to stay out of the fray and survive the violence, they are still greatly affected by the loss of friends and family members to violence. The best we can do as parents is to advise them on how to stay out of the fray as much as possible, and to help them cope when the events do happen.
To stay out of the fray, students should be taught to recognize a possibly violent situation before it happens and to go in a different direction. If a crowd forms, if you hear students talking about an altercation coming up, if you sense tension, go to a quiet place where the danger is not present and call someone on your cell phone. A quiet place may be in a bathroom, back into the school building, or find a side street to go down.
To help the children deal with the violence after it happens, give them plenty of opportunites to express themselves, to cry, to scream, and to talk.
Allow them time to mourn the loss of a friend or acquaintance through counseling, and and getting together with other students or people who are also mourning. Encourage them to attend memorial services, and to discuss the tragedy.
Help them feel empowered in their future and not like victims waiting for the hammer to fall. Seek out organizations and opportunities like this “You Choose” teen conference held at the Thomas Jefferson University Health System last spring.
If you liked this you should also read my other posts at the home blog, the homeschooling blog, the parents blog, and the frugal blog. You can read my recent posts here.
Also read:
How Much Do You Know About Your Children’s Video Games?
Reasons I am Glad We Homeschool: School Bus Incidents
It’s Up to Parents to Act