Cruelty among children too common (01/28/08)

Where are the grown-ups? Have they all abdicated in the name of not getting involved? Is no person responsible for protecting our young any more? Must we delegate every moral decision to someone else?

I have just learned of a girl who tried to commit suicide because she was being bullied at home and at school. Notes had been left in her locker. Notes had been sent to her computer. Notes that said she would be better off dead. Notes that she believed. Sadly, this is becoming common enough that the stories are regulated to the inside pages of the newspapers.

I can see this happening to my young niece. Already she is teased and bullied so much that she doesn't want to go to school. Her solution is to tell the teacher. It isn't working, as this is an ongoing problem. She is in elementary school.

What about the parents of the children who are doing such despicable things? Doesn't the school have a responsibility to at least send a memo home? Don't parents care enough about their children to see to it that they don't terrorize other children? I repeat, where are the grown-ups?

Children are so vulnerable. They know when they don't fit in with others. They don't need to be reminded that they are different. It is the job of adults to protect them. It seems to be a job that some adults have abandoned.

I do not expect teachers to instill values in our children. I do expect them to enforce, as best they can, the moral conduct we expect of a civilized people. I expect them to protect our young from predators even when predators are also young.

I abhor the proliferation of articles on cyberbullying. I detest reading about children shooting children because they were picked on in school. Where are the adults? Where are the leaders? Where are the parents?

I know that teachers care. I know that they do more than they ever have before. When we were in school, centuries ago, we were expected to use common courtesy. We were expected to include the slow one. We were expected to include the sick one. We were expected to include the one who had tried to hang herself with a jump rope, the twins in foster care and the one with the wooden leg. And because it was expected of us we did it.

Yes, there was teasing that bordered on cruel. One boy on our bus was teased unmercifully because he was part Asian. Even so, nobody ever told him he was better off dead. Nobody left notes in his locker. Because it was a different time and place he went home to a mother and father who loved him and he survived.

I understand the frustration that parents have when they do try to protect their children from bullies. There was a time when my daughter was living with her father and his third wife. My daughter was expected to get good grades, do all the housework and take care of her stepsiblings. No matter how much she did it was never enough.

I could see the signs of mental abuse and I called everybody I could think of and was told there was nothing I could do unless she initiated a complaint. Luckily my ex-husband was transferred to a distant city and wife number three declined to move and they divorced.

My daughter recovered her self-worth and is doing quite well but the scars of that time remain.

I have to wonder what effect this will have on our culture when meanness is tolerated and even encouraged. What kind of people will these kids grow up to be? Will it become a nation divided between prey and predator? Will kids eventually realize that only small, insecure, stupid people make a habit of victimizing the weak? Will the victims realize that they have far more to contribute to society than their tormentors ever will?

Where are the grown-ups? Why do we believe that it is always someone else's job and not ours? Why have we allowed bullying to become a part of everyday life for so many of our young? Where are the adults? Can we change this before it is too late?

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