PARENTS
We all have two whether we like it or not.
Some are good, some bad; some responsible, others not so much.
Recently, 14-year-old Adriana Kuch, a former student at Regional Center High School in Berkeley Township, New Jersey, took her own life after a video was posted online that showed the teen being brutally assaulted by a thuggish group of teenage girls in the hallway of the school on February 1, 2023.
Two days later Adriana killed herself. While we will never know the precise reason why she took her own life, it is more than reasonable to assume that the beating by the school hallway terrorists and its posting online contributed to that decision.
Who is responsible for this child’s death?
Certainly some school officials are, and they should be criminally prosecuted. They knew bullying was a problem at the school and did nothing about it. That makes them co-conspirators in the official negligence that led to Adriana’s untimely death.
And all the culprits who were involved in the actual assault and others who had prior knowledge of the conspiracy to assault Adriana should be prosecuted and sent to a juvenile detention facility until they reach age 18. Send them to a place where bullying is a fine art.
But it is the parents of the attackers who bear the greatest responsibility for the acts of their bullying children. By giving these children the breath of life, they assumed a responsibility to provide them with decent, responsible lessons of behavior.
And these parents knew by the time their children reached ten or twelve years of age that they were problems; that they liked to hurt, ridicule, and hate others outside their little social orbits. And, like the school officials, the parents did nothing, or very little, to correct their children’s cruel, irresponsible behavior, much less try to prevent it.
In a Washington Post opinion piece today, Kate Woodsome said American teens are “unwell” because “American society is unwell.”
Woodsome observed that “solutions” to making teens well “start with compassionate, radical honesty: American kids are unwell because American society is unwell. The systems and social media making teenagers sad, angry and afraid today were shaped in part by adults who grew up sad, angry and afraid themselves.”
Those “adults” Woodsome referred to are primarily the parents, and the fact that they may have had a “sad, angry and afraid” upbringing is no excuse for allowing their children to become school hallway terrorists.
Parents have a responsibility as long as their children are under their household to monitor their behavior and correct their mean, self-centered behavior.
The problem is that most of the school hallway terrorists got their training from mean-spirited, often racist, and socially disgruntled parents who see life through a prism of self-interest, grievance blaming, and enough prejudices to fill the Grand Canyon.
Hopefully, there will be some serious accountability for all those who contributed to Adriana’s death.
Probably not, though. The school hallway terrorists may get a few hours of “good behavior” training at the local mall and 30 minutes of restriction from social media.
And their parents will curse and blame Adriana.