Moms and Dads, Don’t Let Your Kids Grow up to be Rapists, Murderers, Addicts

Moms and Dads, don’t let your kids grow up to be rapists, murderers, addicts
By Gil Villagrán, MSW

Recent events make us all aware of the perils just below the surface of the happy lives we try to create for our families, and especially for our children. As a father of three and recently blessed with twin grand daughters, as well as a husband, brother, uncle, and college educator of young adults—I see the vast possibilities that every child presents with their first smile, word, step, first day in school, team tryout, school play, viola solo, term paper, first date, prom, graduation, and moving into college dorm. In a flash of time, the baby is a young adult--eager for his or her own life. Parents pray the care and instruction and direction, even nagging to be careful about everything will be second nature to the most important person in the world—their child.

Yet every parent knows that we can only hope that our child will always behave according to lessons taught and those not taught but expected none-the-less. We know that even the best child, the smartest, may do really risky things, forget their moral lessons, be influenced by kids we warned them about, may do something really stupid, dangerous, even horrible.

Three events present us with such a reality. Last week in Gilroy: three adolescent girls at a slumber party sneaked out to a boy’s house where they drank beers and returned with vodka. Hours later, one of the girls was vomiting, by early morning her breathing was shallow, CPR efforts could not revive her, and she was pronounced dead due to alcohol poisoning. The all too common act of teenage drinking turned into the tragic nightmare parents dare not imagine.

On Halloween night a 12 and 13-year-old were trick-or-treating, when gang members attacked them. Though they stated they were not gang members, they were chased and an 18-year-old allegedly shot the 12-year-old in the head, which remains in very serious condition. We can only hope that he will survive and live a normal life. The brutality committed by the 18-year-old shooter is incomprehensible, except that in the gang culture, random and senseless shootings are a common initiation ritual for a “wannabee gangbanger,” or he just wanted or didn’t like the color of the child’s expensive red Nike Cortez shoes. The grotesque nature of such an act is even further disturbing for the consequence that will likely be a lifetime in prison for the shooter, at a taxpayer cost of $40,000 per year ($1.6m for 40 years!). The perpetrator’s parents now suffer the horror of their son’s monstrous act upon an innocent boy. How does a parent continue to love such a son? I cannot bear to imagine this possibility.

A third event took place at Richmond High School in October during the school homecoming dance, when a 15-year-old was sexually assaulted in a courtyard by as many as 10 males, and even more--reportedly including other girls--watching and encouraging the continued two hours of public sexual assaults. The victim attended the school, was a friend, neighbor, classmate of at least some of the attackers—yet they somehow found it in themselves to de-humanize her in this manner.

In these events, there were victims, two dead, one traumatized for life, and young perpetrators whose parents no doubt had great hopes for their future that did not include an early grave, a wheelchair or a jail cell. As a parent, as a child welfare social worker for 20 years, I can attest that almost all parents do the best they can. Yet we can and must do a better job of raising our children.

Moms and Dads: don’t let your children grow up to be rapists, murderers or addicts.
Youth: remember parental lessons and their hopes for you before you act. Please!