Teach Them Well
About a week or so, I talked on this blog about some neighbourhood kids who trashed my youngest son's bike. When I called all three parents to talk to them about what happened, all the parents said basically the same thing....thank you for telling us, we'll certainly be dealing with this with our kids, this is a priority for us, etc. etc.
Since then, I had heard nothing from any of them. So today, I called the families again. One mom said that she really didn't know what was happening; that the dad of another of the boys was taking care of it. When I pressed her about what the plan was, she sounded vague, saying she'd been away and then was working a lot and she really was out of the loop. So much for it being a priority for her.
Then I phoned the next family. The dad works two jobs and wasn't around, nor was the kid.
When I called the third family, the teenager who'd been involved in this incident answered. When I asked him what he and his friends planned to do to make good, he said he wasn't sure because his dad (the one who was supposedly 'taking care of it') was away for the weekend. I pointed out that it wasn't his dad who'd wrecked the bike and I would appreciate him talking to his friends over the next few days and arranging to do three things: pay for a new bike, apologize to the younger boy who they'd bullied, and apologize to my son for wrecking his bike. The boy said, "Yeah, well maybe we can just give Jamie the money at school." When I asked how he planned to apologize to the younger boy, who doesn't go to that school, he said he didn't know about that. I suggested he think about it.
I hung up feeling puzzled, frustrated and sad. Although I don't know these boys, I'm sure they're basically good kids. But they did a stupid thing and they should be helped to understand how their actions affected others. And it's our job as parents to help in that understanding. But instead, any 'teaching moment' here is getting lost among vacations and double shifts and generally busy lives. How have we managed to get our priorities so screwed up?
God knows my kids are no angels. I remember years ago sitting in the principal's office bawling after my oldest son had done something particularly thoughtless and hurtful. I was convinced he was going to end up sitting in a jail cell and I kept asking myself what I had done wrong. It's quite humbling being a parent at times like that. But all you can do is try to make some good come out of the bad. In that case, the consequences of my son's actions helped him learn a lesson that he never forgot and I believe it made him a better person.
In this case, I fear that the only thing these three boys will learn is that bullying and damaging property really isn't a big deal and it can all be fixed by throwing some money at the problem.
6:08:40 PM 
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