“practically speechless”..my son didn't say 100 words to us in ninth grade..he spoke to his friends unbeknownst to us...anyway that’s not a psychotic indicator........ when we talked later on he said he didn’t have anything to say and said he felt inadequate...gee,,,where have aI heard that before ..hhhummm me maybe..its life some express there angst differently......trying to second guess a teenager is next to useless...you’re suppressing that the parents should have seen this coming etc. is Monday morning quarterbacking to inth degree...and disingenuous...

if he exhibited this behavior in class as a college student then the college should have taken some action....the parents ? how the hell do they know? and IF you had children you would realize that at some points in their lives they talk to others but not you as a parent.........since you have no REAL experience with this, I would say you are assuming ......issues you cannot comprehended..

__________________
No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

I do understand your points and think that all of this is being investigated, hopefully with results that might help parents, schools, communities in the future. My concern was directed at the ability of families and teachers to ignore what is truly 'in their face.' The parents in this case I was addressing are only concerned that their son be moved into 2nd grade. In spite of the fact that the first grade teacher has zip to measure as far as academically, though what she has socially is sending red flags all over the place. Yet, the administration will reiterate that it is the 'parents' decision' of whether or not to retain him or refer him, provided he doesn't hurt another student.

It's a bona fide fact that some parents have workable, open lines of communication with their teen kids, and some don't.

And, apparently, based on what you said, you're in the latter group.

If your comment "trying to second guess a teenager is next to useless..." were true, then no parent would be able to communicate with their teen.

But this is not the case, so your statement about the futility of communicating/understanding a teen is false.

It's always possible for parents to talk to teenagers. Some parents are naturally good at it, and some aren't. But those aren't, of course, can always get help/resources to develop a better relationship with their kids. The relationship struggles between parents and teens is a well-studied phenomena, even though each individual case is different.

Claiming "that's the way teens are", etc. is an ignorant statement, because not only is it false (see above), but it implies a definite laziness on the part of the parent, i. e. a "it's not me, it's the system" attitude rather than a pro-active "if other people get it, what am I doing wrong?" attitude.

Once again, I'm not blaming, and I never said they should've been able to predict the massacre.

I'm only saying that, based on the social skills/mental development of Seung Cho, his parents were clearly fuck-ups.

The college did. He was sent to a mental health facility. And he was later released. Yes, I'll admit, the campus police ignored a whole bunch of warning signs. But that's not the topic of this thread.

They could not have known he would have killed a whole bunch of people, but they could have known he was abnormal for his age at several stages in his life, based on his life at school. Hello?! Creeping everyone out in your classroom is a pretty obvious sign that your kid is well, not well.

Right, of course, but from your statement, that wasn't the case. You said your son "didn't say 100 words to you" as a high-school freshman. That's more like almost never for communicating with you.

And that's not the case with every parent, i. e. the never talk scenario.

It's arrogant for you to assume your personal experience reflects the experience of all parents. And I don't have to be a parent to do research, OR to talk to other teens or parents about their experiences.

The feedback I get is that what you're saying--that teens have trouble saying anything to or getting a parent to relate to them--is definitely true in some families, and not in others.

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Life only becomes meaningful at its extremes

-- S

Uhmm, if Cho was a high-school drop-out and a gang-banger living on the streets since he was a teenager, then we could try and lay some blame on the parents.

But here are the facts:

- Cho was a legal adult (23 years old)
- Cho was functional enough to graduate from high school and enter college (with no criminal record)
- Cho was a senior in college (when my kid graduates from high school and enters college - ill foot the tuition but after that, basically, he'll be pretty much on his own from there - i mean after you hit 21, you are an adult. Period. If you commit a crime, you get tried as an adult. You can purchase alcohol, you can purchase a handgun. you can go off to war.)

I don't see any connection with his parents being to blame.

Finally, the person who released the family statement was Cho's sister who not only graduated from Princeton, but is currently a contractor for the US State Department. In other words, if Cho's parents were such obvious failures and, further, if Cho's actions were directly related to poor parenting, how do you explain the simple fact that Cho's sibling is an Ivy League graduate working for the State Department?

Please explain that to me.

whatever...as far as arrogant, its better than you’re Monday morning quarterbacking with internet blurbs as your guide, practical experience would tell you that teenagers go thorough a myriad of phases and laying blame on his parents is just to easy. If its true in some families as you said and not in others then this is the other and so what? If every family that found their teenage uncommunicative and sullen sent up a flare we'd be inundated with calls for help when in fact its usually just a phase...he didn't get through ...tens of millions others did.....and do. In short I think your premise is lacking....

__________________
No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

You're saying your own experience, i. e. the experience of one parent, is better than information on the experience of a whole bunch of them?

It is appropriate to lay blame in Seung Cho's case (not for the massacre, but for his social problems). There is no way in the world he could've ended up as socially dysfunctional as he was unless his parents screwed up big time.

And in fact, they did screw up big time. There were a whole bunch of danger signs, and they missed them all.

It means the parents are doing a better job in cases where it's true.

Society is inundated with calls for help on this matter. Ever listen to Dr. Drew's Loveline show?

Another blatantly ignorant and insensitive statement--"it's just a phase".

If a parent felt his son/daughter didn't talk to him/her because "it's just a phase", then it's pretty damn obvious why the kid isn't talking.

My premise is the evidence. There are families where the teens do have reasonable lines of communication with their parents (i. e. say more than just 100 words/year). That means the families where this isn't happening are dysfunctional, because it means there is something those other families are doing that the non-communicative ones aren't.

It appears you're confusing cliches, i. e. "they're just kids", "it's just a phase", etc. with the truth.

__________________
Life only becomes meaningful at its extremes

-- S

Its a part of growing up to face problems on your own, and thus teenagers DO hide things from their parents and loved ones. They could have the greatest parents in the world, who are always pushing their child to talk and the child could still be closed off. After all parents aren't the only influence on kids, you have their peers (which ultimately become more important) and you have various forms of media, books, etc. Indeed, teenagers develop into their own being despite the parents during their teenage years, which is why it scares so many parents. So all responsibility lays clearly on the shooter.

Oh, but your wrong, you are blaming the parents. Maybe not for the massacre, but for his faulty up-bringing that made this individual such a danger to society.

Oh? How do you know that? By a few plays? All we know that is true from the plays is the focus on violence. Even if his parents were fucked up, its a load of bull that we're all victims and as a result we're entirely fucked up because our parents fucked us up. There is such a thing as free will, I'm pretty sure that people have endured more than whatever he thought he suffered without preforming mass murder.

No it isn't, but I still insist that your so called "warning signs" weren't enough to classify as warning signs of such an act. He showed himself to be no more depressed, deranged than any other number of males his age. If there was any failure it was society, which insist that young men face their problems alone and where depression is overlooked. As for the college, they took the steps they thought necessary, and short of babysitting him they could probably do not much more than what they did as far as /he/ was concerned.



You can't lock someone up for being a creep, nor judge them mostly on being a creep. There are a lot of people who aren't well mentally or seem strange/creepy/weird, but we let it slide most of the time. This is especially so with people we don't know well, which is exactly the kind of environment he was in. In society we rather mind our own business, so if someone acts creepy we choose simply not to interact with that person and ignore them entirely. As for his family maybe they didn't know about such incidents, he was a adult who lived away from his family after all. The university had no obligation to tell his parents and he most certainly probably didn't tell them in their stead. Frankly, I don't see how their parents are relevant at all once he left home.