The senseless killings in Newtown, Conn. have come to mean many things to many different people. What they mean to Parenting after Newtown is that now more than ever children need guidance. They need help. Debi Lynes, a licensed professional counselor, helps get you started.
The questions pile up to dizzying, overwhelming heights. Who does this? Why are so many of these shootings happening in our schools? Why are many of these murderers adolescents and young adults? What is happening to our teens? Maybe he watched too many video games? Why did no one notice? Why does something like this have to happen before we realize we have a public health crisis?
And no matter how many questions as we ask, or how many of society’s ills we blame, we get no closer to an answer. Perhaps there is no one answer. But rather than react to these tragedies, doesn’t it make more sense to become educated about the psychological development of our children? The evidence and research is there, documented in the literature, to help people become more proactive and prevent future incidents.
Parenting does not come with a rule book and each generation of teens and young adults have their own culture, complete with previously unknown challenges, pressures, and stressors. Parents of previous generations may have had to worry about drugs and violence, but never the vagaries of Facebook or the alarming lack of empathy that seems to plague this generation of children. So before you say, “This is the way I was raised and this psychology stuff is voodoo and malarkey,” it may not hurt to look at some cold, hard facts.
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