Ubalblog

[  Mood: Sick ]
[  Currently: Eating A fabulous diabetic breakfast! Yum! ]
This originally started as response to Dharma’s blog. But then I realized I would be hijacking his forum with my opinions, so I switched them here.

The news from Northern Illinois University yesterday was very sad.

Of course I am wondering how long it will be until someone blames video games or violence on TV, rather than what I see as the real problem, the breakdown of the family.

Now I am not talking about the neo-conservative buzz word here. A family to me is a group of people who come together and commit to looking after each other. Man+woman, two women, two men, woman+kids, Man+kids, grandparents + kids, I don’t really care about the make-up, it is the commitment to each other that counts.

In my job, I am increasingly seeing parents who really can’t be bothered raising the children they gave birth to. Oh sure, they will buy them everything they could possibly need or want, but the parents/cargivers have "too much else to do" or "want time for themselves". So the children are raising themselves. And when that happens, you get isolation and disconnection.

And it is my opinion that when isolation and disconnection occur, this kind of stuff happens. It becomes very easy to take a gun and shoot people, because you have no empathy for them. What we need to realize is that, as much as you want to work those extra hours so you can afford the PSP for your child, they would be far better off if you didn’t and spent that time with them.

The sheer size of your academic campuses doesn’t help. High schools in my city are no bigger than 1500 kids. Some of the US ones I have seen are three to five thousand. We have universities that are smaller than that.

Does this mean that Canada is immune to this kind of violence? No. We have had our own tragedies. But being in that smaller environment means that you can get to know most of the kids. And you can show them that some one gives a damn about them. And that connection may be the one thing that stops a child from becoming so disconnected that they bring a gun to school and start shooting.

And because you know them, it also allows you to start interventions for the ones that you see as disturbed, alone, hurting. It may be why we haven’t had as many or as severe.

That’s my take on how to solve this problem. We have to reach out to a generation or two that has learned that they matter little. Let them know that people care about them and that they count for something in this world.

Then maybe the madness will stop.