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Protect children best by living well

Most people have a theory on the April 20, 1999, murders in Littleton, Colo. We do, too. Unfortunately, there aren’t any easy answers to this one. Many children grow up watching violent television, with guns in the house, inattentive parents, no religious affiliation, no school security and pressure from all around to fit in. Yet most get through high school without killing anyone.

Some say the Colorado killers were seriously disturbed. We have to agree. We watched as so many people rushed to produce Band-Aid solutions to this new and terrifying social ill. But we feel most of those "solutions" would only keep Them away from Us. They would allow us to absolve ourselves of responsibility for preventing the next attack, and none would deal with the real problem – the next angry, alienated, unstable teen-ager who wants our attention in the worst way.

Here are four of the supposed "solutions":

	Implement more gun control. It’s already a federal offense for juveniles to purchase handguns, so that law – and the laws against making bombs – didn’t save anyone in Colorado. More gun control makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to own a gun, but criminals will always find another way.
	Censor the media. Much of the content on television, movies, music, video games and the Internet is shocking. But legislating censorship is dangerous when we can’t agree on definitions. Censorship should be, first and foremost, the parents’ job.
	Blame the schools. Instituting dress codes can only ease, not eliminate, social pressure. School security might stop guns at the door but can’t eliminate all dangers. And school counselors or daily prayers, while perhaps helpful to a few, can’t possibly resolve serious psychosis. A school’s function, let’s remember, is to educate, not psychoanalyze. And nowadays, teachers can be caught between a rock and a hard place: damned if they talk to parents and sued if they don’t.
	Arrest the parents. Penalizing parents whose children commit crimes is like slamming the barn door after the horse is gone. It’s simply not possible to pass a law forcing people to be good parents.

And while the parents of the Colorado killers may not be blameless, it looks like almost everyone – friends, classmates, teachers, school administrators and local officers – turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to rage that was practically screamed from the rooftops. They ignored a violent Web site, a video of a mock school shooting, verbal threats and warnings about an upcoming "prank" on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Only Randy Brown, father of a classmate, took the boys seriously. He showed several pages of their Web site to authorities – who allegedly did nothing.

A wise 16-year-old in Florida said, "You can lock a school down as much as you want, but until you start dealing with kids’ troubles, no amount of security seems able to help." Right. We can point fingers, file lawsuits and push for feel-good laws that hopefully will stop the violence at the door, or we can work harder to keep these teen-agers from ever becoming violent. The best way to do that is to live well.

It’s the choices we make, the ways we reach out, the standards we set, the laws we pass and obey, the lessons we teach, the sacrifices we make and the time we spend that protects our children. Everything we do -- the quality and quantity of time we spend with them and the examples we set for them -- directly affects our own children and has a ripple effect on other children around us. Little ears and eyes are on us. If we lie, they learn to lie. If we cheat, they learn to cheat. But, if we take responsibility for ourselves, they learn to do it. If we reach out to the community, they learn to reach out. And if we pay attention to them, they learn to pay attention to us. Children learn from all of us: you, us, the postman and the president. They learn more by our actions than our words, and we have the power to show them that every child is important and wanted.

Perhaps if people in Littleton, Colo., had tried harder to reach out over the last few years, April 20, 1999, might have been just another day.

END

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