Parenting musings due to McDonogh incident

Be forewarned: This isn't a feel-good-happy blog posting. I'm not going to be able to address all of the issues embedded in this incident. There are race, class, and other social issues involved here that I could write a book. Instead, I'm writing this because I want to address the topic that is closer to me right now: parenting.

On Thursday, both the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Examiner broke a story about a Sophomore at McDonogh having bludgeoned his mother and attempted to do the same to his father.

This hit home in 2 ways: 1. The less "deep" way, a McDonogh student did this. 2. How could a child do that to their parent?!

A few months ago, another high school boy killed his entire family while they were sleeping. Again, at the time, I wondered, what would drive a kid to do that? Like the McDonogh kid, everyone said this kid seemed normal, well mannered, good grades...nothing to indicate some kind of psychosis. That incident hit home because it was a kid living in the general vacinity and it was a kid/family situation, but not nearly as closely as this incident.

Like the other incident, this incident makes you ask, why? What would drive a kid to snap like that? And then it makes you look into yourself and pray, please may I not do to my kid whatever the others did to make their kids snap. And, what can I do to help my child control their impulses? But I kept going with this line of thinking... am I really going to do something that's going to make DJ and/or his unborn sibling crack? I mean, what could I do to cause that?! I can't even fathom what I might do... !!

I've spent the last few days thinking about this... I mean, sure, every teenager, myself included, all wants to "kill" their parents, but at no point, not ever, ever, ever do you ever consider the real act. Never even crosses your mind. It's just all part of the asserting your independence and figuring out who you are phase (though you do that again in your mid-20s), but again, it's just frustration with both the parent and the teenager trying to figure out safe boundaries. It's not revert-to-instinct-and-kill anger.

Being a McDonogh grad, I still have connections into the school. In the case of this particular incident, I didn't go searching for details, but the details came to me (maybe God knew I needed the closure...?). The kid had an above 4.0 GPA, so clearly he was an honors/AP student who could most certainly handle the workload McDonogh was throwing at him. Apparently, he'd gotten an average grade on a test, and was afraid to tell his parents.

Excuse me?

You have an above perfect GPA and you're afraid to tell your parents that you got an average grade, not failing, but *average*. Wave the red flag and stop that car!! There's something very, very wrong there.

Ok, I've been afraid to tell my parents about a bad grade, so I can say I can empathize with the feeling. But I certainly had nowhere near this kid's GPA; I was a full GPA point below him! He's a National Honor Society first-rounder and probably future Ivy League-r, and I... yeah... National Honor Society never saw my name on their ballot and the Ivy Leagues rejected me, twice. So the kid had an off day. Don't we all have off days?! Isn't that all part of learning and maturing, is learning how to deal with yourself when you have off days (or streaks) so you can turn it around to get the desired results the next time?

I'm not the world's perfect parent; never will be. But common sense tells me that this was an extreme case of "push".

Yes, McDonogh is a top area college preparatory school with pressure of its own to get its students into the top colleges of the country. But during my time at McDonogh, I never felt like the curriculum, the teachers, or the environment were one of extreme "push". Sure, they'd push you to perform your best, but nothing above and beyond what was reasonable. They were actually a pretty good judge of what you could do. This is not to say there wasn't pressure; but the pressure I felt was from my way-too-smart-for-their-0wn-good classmates. A sizeable chunk of my classmates went to some of the best schools in the country. And even then, I didn't always feel the pressure from them. The existence of that type of pressure is not the school's fault. If anything, that's healthy pressure. And since graduation, there hasn't been THAT much turnover that would change that atmosphere. At least not that I can tell, but I'm an outsider now so I couldn't know that for sure.

Therefore, that leaves the pressure having come from home. Yikes. That's some serious "push". Why? And to what end? The reality is that with 1 average grade, his final grade would be completely unaffected, and thus his overall GPA would be also unaffected. So his chances to get into college are fine. The question to ask is if this is a pattern, what's wrong? Is the class just not his forte? Are there too many extracurriculars going on? Is it that he and the teacher aren't meshing?

I know we don't have the whole picture and a lot of those questions are entirely hypothetical based on the very little information I have. And we'll never get the whole story, if the family even knows... But it makes me feel better to think this is the scenario... to think like this it gives me hope that I may have the ability to control this type of outcome and that this won't happen to my family.

But the lesson here is for me, as a future parent of teenagers, is moderation! And learn my children's limits! Make my expectations clear, but also have compassion and be willing to teach the "off day" lesson. And if it's a pattern, use my analyst and troubleshooting skills and figure out what's going on...

And pray that God can give me the wisdom to raise happy, well adjusted children.