Following the Oct. 24 shooting deaths of three students at Marysville Pilchuck High School by a close, popular classmate, there has been a spate of violence threatened at Puget Sound-area high schools. And a Seattle grandfather killed his daughter, granddaughter and then himself after being confronted with allegations of sexually abusing the 11-year-old girl.
Because of current realities, children are learning to fear what they’ve been traditionally taught were safe places: home and school. Not only are they facing bullying in school or online, they’re dealing with physical and sexual abuse and gun violence. Some youths have become so desensitized to violence that they think tweeting threats to kill students and faculty is a joke.
Troubled youths grow up to be troubled adults who could harm themselves and others in ways unimaginable years ago. Many of these adults were childhood victims, too, who didn’t get the help they needed before they became perpetrators.
Gun rights and mental health issues aside, we need to teach and learn coping skills. We shouldn’t automatically resort to guns, knives or any other weapon to resolve what we perceive as problems. As adults, we should model civil behavior to younger citizens. We have the tools at our disposable — in books, online, from professionals and from each other — to make good decisions; we just need to use them to help others and ourselves.
Teachers, therapists and police can’t be the only ones at the forefront of keeping everyone on the straight-and-narrow. We are all responsible for protecting vulnerable children and reaching them before they commit heinous crimes.