Theme of the Week: Parents

Parents are the first and last authority on what their kids become. Parents can blame the environment, the child's peers or their bad lot in life, but in the end, it is the parent who determines what kind of life their child has. This is what has been bothering me this week and many weeks before this.

There's a child at this school, who doesn't want to be in school and has no respect for authority. When we call his mother every time he gets suspended, all she does is make excuses. Now, I know. The mother does care about her son. She works 60-70 hours a day to make ends meet. And I'm pretty sure she's a single mother. But when it comes down to it, there is NO need to lie for your child. There is NO need to make excuses when your child is messing up inside and outside school. In the end, It is her fault that she is letting her child become a juvenile delinquent.

People tell me, how can the mother control her child if she's always working? I say, parents should be instilling the values that make a child controllable from birth.

People say, what do you know? You're not a parent! I say, I may not be a parent but I was raised well and I grew into a respectable and responsible human being. Thank God for that. I also have seen in the short time that I have been a middle school security guard, that there are many ways of good parenting and many ways of bad. What the bad parenting all have in common are excuses and too much freedom given to the kids with not enough responsibility. What I see in common with all the GOOD parenting, is all good parents hold their children responsible for their actions in some way or another.

Now there are exceptions to every rule. The homeless girl who went to Harvard for example. She practically raised herself and her support system was mostly herself with a little help from a generous hometown. But she's one in a million.

My point is, love your kids enough to say no. To be there when they need you and not only when they want you. Love your kids enough to teach them to live the good life. And by good life, I mean one that keeps you out of trouble and alive. That's all I'm asking, is that too much to wish for?

Befriending the Tough Chick

There's those girls in every grade. You know them well, and probably hated them or were them in school. The tough girl. The biggest and baddest girl in the grade. I hated those girls when I was in middle school and avoided them in high school.

Now, It's my job to befriend her. In the 8th grade, we have 2 girls who are the biggest troublemakers of the grade. One, is actually a pretty nice girl, but has to have this front up in order to survive. The other, is plain trouble.

The real troublesome one, has decided recently to hate me again. She tried to get past me for being late to lunch by writing a fake pass in her agenda book and trying to say that her teacher made her late. I only knew it was fake because the Lunch Aide saw the girl write the pass. I mean seriously? She wouldn't confess until I threatened to walk her around the school to find the teacher. And then she had the nerve to think that lying to me and forcing me to threaten her would give her a free pass. She also convinced another student to do the same thing she did.
Lesson: Do not make the sercurity guard mad. She will take you to the office and give you over to the Admin.
Result: Lunch Detention.

The other girl, the...I'll call her the nice one. She was walking in the hall today, with an open cup of water. Another young girl came racing down the hallway and smashed into her. So, because she was in front of all her friends, she started yelling and making a ruckus. She threatened the younger girl that she was going to smash her face in after school. She said this in my presence and then again said it to me in the presence of one of her friends while in the bathroom. I do bathroom checks. I had to report her to the Admin. If I had not done this, the "nice" girl would have really waited after school to smash in the other girl's face.

Result: Being dragged to office, given a warning. The girl got on her bus and went home. Crisis averted easily.