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I can’t tell you how many friends of mine who are teachers have told me about students from all walks of life and how they behave. Sometimes the ones with seemingly awful home lives can be a very well behaved child. Parents who are not involved or could care less about education, but yet these are students who thrive in school. Possibly because their efforts are being noticed and recognized unlike they would be at home.
On the flip side of it sometimes the most involved parent who chaperones every field trip and volunteers at all class functions can have behavioral problems. I’ve seen it happen with a friend of mine actually. She was at her whits end with her child and behavior. She was very involved in the school too. All around a good loving and involved parent, but still had the teacher telling her about behavioral issues on a daily basis and calls from the principal that he was in his office for one reason or another.
We as parents and just people in general do need to be accountable for our actions. And sometimes that means the actions of our children. However, there are times when we have to say is it always the parents fault? After all, no one is perfect. Yes, we’re going to make mistakes as parents, but our children are going to make mistakes too.
Outside Influences
As our children get older they start to have more and more outside influences. Unless we keep our children with us at all times it’s really hard to avoid those outside influences. And the older our children get, hopefully the more independent they get. But with that independence often comes defiance.
The Stuebenville Rapists have been in the news a lot lately. There has been a whole lot about blaming the victim and how the media handled things, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the parents of those boys. What those boys did was wrong, no doubt about it. And they are being punished for it (even if we think it’s enough or not). They ruined a young girl’s life, but in the process they ruined their own lives.
But one thing I have noticed is people are pointing fingers at the parents of these boys. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I know anything about these parents. They could be the scum of the earth for all I know, but they could just possibly be hard working people who have been doing the best they could. Is it possible that they didn’t take enough time to teach them to respect girls and that it’s not right to take advantage of a girl who is drunk or unconscious? Yeah, it’s possible. But is it also possible that they did tell their sons this was wrong and they didn’t listen? Yes, that’s a distinct possibility.
These boys were seemingly good kids before this. From what I understand part of the reason for the lighter sentence is because they had no prior run ins with the law. It just so happened that their first screw up was a really big one. Why did they do it? Peer pressure perhaps? That outside influence and a desire to be “cool”. Maybe they thought because she wasn’t saying no it was okay. It’s all speculation, but I think it’s a pretty safe assumption to say that the parents are not to blame in this case.
These are practically grown kids. And no matter how much we have taught them over the years we can’t keep them from outside influences. We as parents hope we instill certain morals and values in our children, but sometimes those outside influences outweigh our influence.
Don’t Jump To Conclusions
I’m not going to say I’ve never passed judgment against parenting situations. I had a few judgmental thoughts go through my mind this weekend when I brought my son to a birthday party for one of his classmates. It was at a local bowling alley and they had pizza on the table for the kids. I watched as a woman came up and helped herself to the pizza and then walked over to the lanes next to us. When she brought her kids back for more I had to step in and say this is for this birthday party. Immediately after that her child began bowling on one of our lanes. It’s not too large of a stretch to say well if a parent could take things which do not belong to her, then the child would too. While I do think the pizza was a mistake it’s hard to see a parent allow their child to do something and then not say anything. To not apologize, because that’s what I would do.
Just because we would do something a certain way though does not always mean someone is a bad parent. I have seen some very questionable parenting styles in my time. And the fact of the matter is that sometimes the child who grows up in the worst situation does things completely opposite of what they have lived with. The same can be true of the best parents out there.
I have an older brother. We have the same parents. We were raised in the same home with the same two parents. In high school my brother had to go to what was called the alternate high school because he couldn’t get along in the regular high school. He was in trouble with the law, frequently stole things, did drugs, would run away, and just in general caused a lot of grief for my parents. On the flip side of things I was always on the college bound track in school. I didn’t get in trouble with the law. Complete opposite of my brother. We had the same rules, the same love, and yet for whatever reason my brother was out of control. Was that my parents fault? I don’t think so. They did everything they could think of to help him. Did they do things wrong? Probably. I’m sure there were things they wished they had done differently, but they did what they thought was best at the time.
Every child is different. We don’t always know what’s going to happen. Why did my brother experiment with drugs, but I did not? I have no idea. We were very vocal in my home about the effects of drugs. I don’t know why my brother made that choice, but he did. It was his choice. Not because he didn’t know it was bad for him because he did. And many times teenagers just do things just because. Their way of asserting independence. And one day we all end up looking back on the things we did in our past and we think what were we thinking. Then we hope and pray that our kids never do the things we did.
We can only control so much though. That’s one of the most frustrating things about being a parent. We want our kids to grow and spread their wings, but when we’re going through it with them it’s hard. It’s hard when they choose not to listen to our advice. It’s hard watching them make the mistakes we hoped we could help them avoid, but ultimately these mistakes are important to be made. Sometimes we have to see for ourselves despite everything we have been told by everyone around us. And our job as parents when these things happen is to help show our kids the importance of being accountable. No matter how it might look to the outside world.
Do you think parents are always to blame for a child’s bad behavior?
