“The hardest battle you're ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.”--Leo F. Buscaglia

I found out that today (9/19) there was a fight at my old high school. 4 students were involved. There were arrested. 4 teachers that tried to intervene and break up the fight received minor injuries and were taken to a local hospital and released shortly thereafter. It made the news on at least TWO networks....which kind of goes back to this entry that I wrote earlier. 

Someone on Facebook earlier said that we cant hold the parents accountable in every circumstance because kids will be kids. I disagree. Parents, TALK to your kids. Every day. Talk to their teachers. Get to know their friends. And yes, again....set RULES and consequences!! Follow through with those consequences. Start NOW. It's never too early. But there are times when it is most certainly too late. You have to have a dialogue with your kids. And not the condescending, "I'm your mother/father, do what I say" dialogue. That will get you nowhere. Start talking to your kids as soon as they are old enough to converse. Let them know that they can ALWAYS come and talk to you about everything. Kids make the wrong decisions because they are afraid of talking to their parents. So, they get their advice from their friends and from TV. Teens giving teens advice is just a recipe for disaster. 

This is not a new problem....fights in school, drugs in school. When I was in high school--- 20 years ago, by the way, we had a fight almost every week. And it was the same high school as today's fight, as I said. We had bomb threats often. We had an incidence of vandalism that was so bad that school was out for a couple of days. It was just the way things were. Now people that I went to school with are saying things like we never had it that bad in school. That sounds familiar doesn't it? It's from that previous mentioned blog again! But seriously. Are you kidding me? Who re-wrote history? It absolutely happened!! I can remember being terrified because of the bomb threats....which, by the way, were often called in by our own students on school grounds!!! The vandalism WAS an isolated event. But the fights? It was almost expected to happen. So no....nothing is new here. The fact that schools are cracking down and calling the cops? THAT's NEW!!!! Bravo!!! There should never be a tolerance for violence in a learning environment. Kick them out....Put them in juvenile hall where they can get an education there. Or just kick them out and home school them since they cant act right in public. We have GOT to start taking accountability of our youth! If it's not gonna happen at home, it has to happen somewhere!

Here's the story on the fight.