Violence — A review for the emotionally self-serving parent

by James Norton

You hear about violence everywhere today – on TV, in the Movies – glorified by popular singers – you can’t get away from it. There are two widely known and generally accepted schools of thought about violence and how it affects our kids – some parents either try to limit their children’s exposure to it, or they just let the children find out for themselves and make their own decisions. They’re both WRONG. That worked for my generation and my parents – those of us over 35 years of age – because that’s how we learned – by making mistakes – a trial and error kind of social development.

I don’t care how smart you are – how many businesses you own – how quick you are on your feet or how diplomatic you are in a tense situation. If you think for one minute that the kids of today aren’t ten times more sophisticated than we were at their age you’re a fool. We can’t sit back and watch our kids develop on their own given the amount of exposure to violence in mass media that they are bombarded with all day, every day.

As parents, we don’t need to coddle our children and make them into 21st century earthy-crunchy hippies, but we have an obligation to help them develop into better human beings – their future and their kid’s future – depends on it.

It’s one thing to hide your head in the sand and ignore the problems of today – whether it be drug use, crime or violence against your fellow man – or woman, but its another thing when you actively participate in demonstrating just how childish we can be as adults. Yes, I’m talking about the increased violence at kids sporting events recently in other communities. Parents picking fights with other parents because their Billy crosschecked your precious Steven when he wasn’t looking was just the beginning. Now we have parents going after referees and even the kids themselves. What kind of mental midget goes after a teenager for anything happening on a field or on the ice that you personally have nothing to do with other than you may (or may not – who knows) have fathered another child in the vicinity?

I can make these statements because I am a parent of two kids – who are into just about every sport known to man – and yes, even though they live 1100 miles away, I get the chance to watch them play sports once in a while. One time, I watched my daughter fall on her face during a soccer game and cry because she was tripped, and no, there was no call from the blind as a bat referee – but I didn’t run across the field and smash his face because of it. I didn’t plan on running over that other kid’s parents in the parking lot. I didn’t take Kaitlin home and teach her how to deck someone the next time she got tripped. I explained to her that contact sports have a built-in level of interaction which isn’t always nice, so she’d have to learn to watch out for tripping and pushing off and learn when it’s part of the game and when it’s just plain old nastiness.

As I am typing this, ironically, I am watching Braveheart and musing about how someone in my office building got me so riled today I thought about getting up and tossing him out a window. Does that mean I am a psycho? No – get a grip. Anger is a healthy emotion we need to vent as rational human beings. Some of us do it better than others, for sure.

I see and talk to bitter people every day. I feel bad for them. They need to wake up to the real world – a place where you have to deal with situations that sometimes just stink.

Thankfully Somerville hasn’t become one of those cities with parents fighting other parents, referees or kids. Let’s work hard to keep it that way. Sure, we have screwed up politics, underage drinking, drug use in schools, pod people running rampant all over the city – thinking they’re the next secret squirrel, when the fact is you generally can’t fart in the political arena in this city without the stench reaching across the city in a matter of hours. It would appear nobody is safe – we are all suspect – and it’s great writing material.

The bottom line is this – we have kept violence at our kids’ local sporting events non-existent and we need to keep it that way – but it’s up to us as parents. Let’s educate our kids and set better examples for them.

Think about it.