Saturday, July 25, 2009

Its 10 O'Clock Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Yesterday morning, on my way out the door with the dog, I discovered that our condo and cars had been egged. One other person in our area was egged as well. It took half a day just to cleanup the mess and I'm not finished yet. And the smell is nauseating and there are compounds in eggs that eat away at paint finishes. This happened after midnight. We have a 10 p.m. curfew in our community for minors who are not gainfully employed.

What do the eggees have in common? Both have members of their families that are school teachers that taught or teach at the same school.
I beseech all of you who have children, to keep track of them at night. Instill in them early, that teachers are people who have feelings and real lives. Let them know how hurtful and destructive this kind of behavior is. No one deserves to be treated like this. It's a form of bullying and intimidation. This is not just a child's prank.
Children have a greater capacity for understanding when you make it real for them. Take the time, invest wisely in your children. Invest in your Community.

3 comments:

  1. YES!

    When I was a kid I didn't have a sense of teachers as people. They were grown-ups that had control over my life for hours at a time. And as such, they made me nervous...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Neurondoc (no surprise there, as she's one of my friends). I think that often kids don't see teachers as people. I think that may be even more true today than it was when I was in school 30 years ago, simply from the way schools are organized nowadays - this no slam on the schools, just an observation.

    We passed one of my son's teachers alongside the road, he was walking his dog with his family - my son expressed surprise. He'd never thought of the teacher as a regular guy with a family before.

    Of course, I also have to wonder what these kids, and we're assuming it was kids here, were doing out unsupervised that late at night. Kids have to have boundaries and limits - or they never learn where the line of acceptable behavior is as an adult. Kids have to be held accountable, or they never learn to be accountable, to society or to themselves. I used to see this in the military with new recruits all of the time - too many kids simply were never taught reasonable self discipline. Those kids never made it, they couldn't handle the pressure or the responsibility. You could always tell the ones who had cheated their whole lives, who always had someone to bail them out, who made excuses for them, and never taught them to take of themselves. Jocks were the worst. They spent all of their time making excuses and looking for the easy way out, they were a danger to themselves and to everyone around them. Some learned and stayed, some didn't and got out or got thrown out, and a lot of them died. Parents who don't teach their kids discipline, self control, honorable behavior and above respect for others are not doing them any favors at all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I guess all the more reason to not over look the need to teach our children that teachers are people too.

    ReplyDelete