Most of you know that I've got four children. My eldest is seventeen. Oh heavens...how did that happen? Wasn't I just seventeen the other day? I'm sure I was.... Well, she's amazing. I know the majority of mothers have very high compliments to pay their children--and rightly so. However, my baby girl is astounding by anyone's standards. She is going to high school and college at the same time. In high school she's taking mostly AP (Advanced Placement) classes, which also count for college credits. She gets up at five a.m. every morning, goes to Seminary, then goes to school, she works four hours daily as an office manager at Winderemere Real Estate. She speaks Spanish, plays piano, guitar and flute. She goes to the gym daily and it shows. This was her yesterday. This is a picture I just took of her, after getting her braces put on. Now, having said that she is gifted and talented, I should ammend this post to tell you the following. She just got home
whoa.
ReplyDeletei read the article. this boy obviously as gotten to a point where he doesn't understand that any good can actually happen in his life, that he might as well cash it all in. his sickness has become his identity instead of simply being sickness that needs to be addressed and healed. so sad that he equates himself, his very worth, with the rage he is going through. what on earth were his parents doing all these years? i guess i have a pretty good clue.
I wish I knew how to better recognize a troubled teen on the edge of doing something that horrific. I just don't know. Parents need to be so incredibly entwined in their children's lives so that they know what they are doing, what they are feeling and what direction their lives are taking.
ReplyDeleteLast night I spent a great deal of time talking to my eldest child. Being seventeen is so incredibly rough sometimes. Hormones, school, work, peer pressure, the stress of going to college AND high school at the same time. It was good that we spent so much time talking. I even got some hugs. She's an amazing person.
why wouldn't she be? apple don't fall far from the tree.
ReplyDeleteThat's frightening. Made all the more frightening by the ease with which he could access firearms. The US doesn't have any more nutters in the world than anywhere else but it does have nutters with guns. I'm 45 but I can only remember one school rampage in the UK and that wasn't by a pupil. What happens there that it's so different? Pamela has touched on the core though - you have to be in touch with your children. Only parents can teach reality - you can't expect a child to get a balanced view of the world when all it respects are its peers, TV and video games. Very sad.
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