Teen Trauma

     The forecast for last weekend in Chicago was warm and bloody. 37 people were shot, two were stabbed, and of them 7 died mostly as a result of gang violence.

Mayor Daley has made curfew 30 minutes earlier to get kids off the streets, but that has been a futile attempt to stop the violence. He has been urging parents to know where their children are and to help enforce his curfew. Parents and community leaders have taken to marching down the streets in protest to stop the killing of their children.

This is all well and fine but will stop nothing. First,who do they think is killing these teens? I’ll tell you. Other teens! These other teens are their children too, and their classmates, and their neighbors. This makes you think that the problem can be solved if parents watched their teens better. That makes sense because everyone knows that teens follow their parents rules and even though they might be a gang-banger who has just shot and killed someone, they will certainly listen to their mother when she tells them they’re grounded or have to be home by 10. “Yes Mom, let me put my 45 away first”.

So we look to the parents to be better, to take control, to be responsible. That’s what they should be doing but here’s the problem. Our government has so tied up the hands of parents, that those who have out of control teens are left impotent. Once again picture it. The gang-banging, drunken, cracked out, murdering teen is getting into trouble and all his mom can do is ground him? take away his video game? tell him to behave?

Yes those things should have been done when he/she was very young, but they either weren’t or the discipline and rules weren’t strong enough to withstand the outside influences of gang life. It does no good just to play the blame game.