The importance of why.

I am less worried about the safety of our children than I am about the sanity of their parents.

We have made our children the focus of everything and then wonder why they are so self-obsessed. There is a woman near me who takes her kids the two hundred yards to school in a car and then spends lord knows how much on Gym membership…WALK YOU STUPID BITCH…Your wallet and your brats will love you for it.

I was reported for letting my 8 year old walk to school on her own…this isn’t Harlem here, it is a small rural village. She has common sense, a knowledge of the green cross code and a friends house that she can run to pretty much along the entire route.

Children are not little angels waiting to be preyed upon by the imaginary paedophile who is obviously salivating at the end of the road if you let the kids walk, offering sweeties and puppies.

My kids are unformed future adults who can learn to hate or love, fear or hope. It is my job to teach my brats about ‘why‘.

 Every child goes through the ‘why’ stage (personally I think I am still stuck there). It’s the one when you answer a hundred questions before resorting finally beaten and weary to ‘Because it is’…”Why is grass green?’ ‘Why do dogs want to be with people?’ ‘Why does Mrs Macfarlane smell of wee?’

Now the funny thing is, that my son likes to ask a lot of whys to his sister , who is fifteen months older, and it gradually gets filtered through to me for the tricky stuff, but the other day I heard her sigh to him ‘Because it is’.

She got that off me…how proud I aint! (Don’t worry, the school agreed to deal with the literacy angle).

This meandering and pratting about is actually leading to a point…actually not a point as that hints at a resolution in my thinking that I have not reached, but I digress, again.

Imagine if you never got to ask a single why. If  you were met with ‘go away‘, tough is good, and saw and witnessed big people beating up on small people all the time. Food is whatever you snatched from a cupboard and could be hit for if it was discovered by a big person.

If you can learn from over attention to be completely self obsessed and selfish, then you can learn to take power by being a bigger person humiliating and hurting a smaller one just as easily. And that is the answer to ‘Why shouldn't I hit someone?’whis is a very different question than 'Why should I?'

People who show and nurture self confidence and respect by showing it get those kids. Those who show and nurture violence, arrogance, fear and lack of restraint get those kids.  You can hold the seed of the most beautiful flower in the world but if you don’t treat it properly you will just end up with weeds.

Jamie Bulger was murdered in the most horrific fashion, one that gives every parent nightmares.  Jon Venables and  Robert Thompson had no childhood and no guidance. They were pretty much feral and the lessons they learned from what they saw were just as hateful as the crime they committed. The way to get power was for bigger people to hurt smaller people and when there is two of you the egging on raises the stakes…ask any skinhead or gang member.

BUT they were still two ten year old boys and we stuck them out of sight and out of mind after we asked ‘Why did you do it?‘  They knew that no ‘why’  should get an answer from experience. We then released two men who had no childhood, adolescence or experience and expected them to be good men.

 They never met a good man! They were not properly equipped for the outside world and they never have been. Before we start screaming about evil, perhaps we should take a deeper look at ourselves. There were three victims in that crime, not one angel and two demons. So Why?