<p>A few weeks ago we had a thread about bullying & what steps to take for self-defense. Nobody, however, suggested this:
<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com:80/id/17046114/from/ET/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com:80/id/17046114/from/ET/</a></p>
<p>OMG!! What else can I say?</p>
<p><em>sigh</em> Many times kids elect not to take their parents’ advice. Why couldn’t THIS have been one of those times? 
A tragedy all the way around, and the ripple effects of this devastating loss will be far-reaching. ~berurah</p>
<p>That is unbelievable! What kind of “mother” would do such a thing!!! I’m telling you, this world is going to h**l in a handbasket!</p>
<p>since they havent found her son yet- I am curious if she has confessed to giving him the weapon. I wouldn’t doubt it however- I have run across parents who seem to not have an idea of what appropriate responsible adult behavior would be.</p>
<p>Rational thinking, is not a criteria for fertility.</p>
<p>What a terrible story. Some of these kids don’t stand a chance. It’s very sad.</p>
<p>some of the kids actually have more sense than their parents- I advise some of them re life choices after high school- because their parents aren’t able. ( I do a lot more listening with some than anything else- )</p>
<p>No wonder, some of their parents gave birth to them when they were only 15!,
I was actually surprised upon reading this report how old the mom was, since her son was 17, I was expecting her to be 31 or some such.</p>
<p>Looking at my own oldest at 24, I am still aware at how young she is, even though she is much more worldly and accomplished than I was, when I gave birth to * her* when I was 24.</p>
<p>This is kinda going off topic sorry- but when I am working with these kids and they tell me about their mom who is 34 and just had a 5th kid with the 5th dad, its hard to not pass judgment in my mind- and stay focused on encouraging the student to see their potential and choices.</p>
<p>I have no idea if that was the situation in this case- but helping kids to see lifestyles beyond what is in their immediate perception- can be life changing & it is heartbreaking, when it doesn’t seem to be something they can grasp right now.</p>
<p>A little off topic here, but emeraldkity4 raises an interesting question. Are young people today more or less “mature” than our generation was at the same age? More in some ways, less in others?</p>
<p>I don’t know that they are more mature, but they certainly have been exposed to much more. They are probably more <em>sophisticated</em>, but that does not mean they are more mature.</p>
<p>Anderson Cooper did an amazing segment on the violence in NO right now. Did you know there have been 20 murders since Jan 1st in that city? 20! That was yesterday’s count, day 39 of the new year. Apparently the authorities will give up looking for murder suspects in NO after 30 days, so this mother and son need to just disappear quietly for a very short time and all will be forgotten.</p>
<p>Post traumatic stress disorder? It comes in many shapes and sizes. It makes me wonder. There’s a decent doctoral dissertation in there somewhere.</p>
<p>In comparing my- & my daughters life- say our choices at 17- I see her having more choices.
I dropped out of high school before graduation when my father died. I had little idea about choices afterwards- I had worked through high school and that is what I continued to do, moving in with my boyfriend as well, just living day to day- because there wasn’t much exposure to anything different.</p>
<p>I didn’t know anyone who was going to college at the time, it had never been suggested to me- and I was too far behind to consider going to night school to finish up diploma. I did however get my GED, when my boyfriend pushed me to attend a community college.</p>
<p>My daughter of course we tried to raise being conscious of exposing her to opportunities and choices. I do think that she is more mature in that she has had more exposure to making thoughtful reasoned decisions and she has grown from that experience. Emotionally she is just as young, but where I was led by my hormones, she seems to be more able to see potential difficulties and take that into consideration, rather than ignore long term problems for short term benefit.
No credit cards for her in other words ;)</p>
<p>"justa"Mom, thank you for bringing the situation up in N.O. up. It’s so frustrating and discouraging. N.O. used to have a very high solve rate for murders, too. But now the police are just stretched too thin. My boss is so concerned he’s started walking me to my car every day, even though we only park across the street and leave in daylight.</p>
<p>One real problem is that there are a lot of teenagers back in town whose parents haven’t been able to return yet. It’s estimated that about 25% of the kids in some of the Recovery District High Schools have no parents in N.O. (Their parents can’t afford to come back because the cost of housing is so high, but the kids are so unhappy away that they send them back to live with friends or a relative who may be only a few years older).</p>
<p>The child in this story might have been better off without parental influence, but in general, having this many unsupervised teenagers hasn’t been good. One of the high schools has had 6 serious assaults on teachers this year alone.</p>
<p>Shell Oil is funding a project with Harvard interns in city planning to help bring back the Broadmoor neighborhood. They worked with the residents to get a charter school established and reopen the library. One of the other things they did was to work with the residents to identify the “hot spots” where more police presence was indicated. So far, Broadmoor hasn’t had many problems with violence.</p>