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Health & Fitness

Angry Young Men

I met yesterday with a group of friends for talk over tea and sandwiches and as often happens with this group of friends, our discussion drifted from one issue to another with some heated conversations on everything from North Korea to Obama but one point of discussion hit home with all of us. We started to discuss gun violence in American society. We discussed not just the mass shootings like Sandy Hook but the killings that occur every day in our inner cities. The consensus of this group of friends is that we have a problem. Our problem is with how and what we teach our young men. As the mother of two twenty something young men (one with Asperger's syndrome ), this part of the discussion struck home. We teach our young men to be tough. We teach them ( in these post 911 days) to be military ready. They get messages all the time from T.V.,Movies,the Internet, and violent video games that tough is the way to be. What we don't teach however is empathy. As these young men are thrust further into a world that revolves around disconnection in order to connect, learning to feel toward others can be a difficult concept to teach. More parents are working multiple jobs,extended families close by to fill the gap don't always exists,and in a lot of cases, single moms are raising boys with no real male role models and boys are looking to movies and video games to find what daddy used to teach. It is no wonder our young men are growing up distant and angry. Families used to go to church every Sunday. They used to have neighbors who knew them and called Mom and Dad if the kids got up to something they shouldn't be doing. Now, neighbors live next to each other for years without talking. We live each in our isolated 1/2 acre territories and are afraid to get too friendly. So what can we do to fix this? I am not so sure. One friend suggested that we require our kids to do community service as early as first grade so they are taught empathy for others at an early age. Perhaps it is a matter of society stepping in and giving their two cents when they see a child doing something right or wrong? I know when my kids were younger, with a special needs child, the easiest thing for me would have been to isolate and insulate but it was so important to me that my children learn to operate in society that I took them everywhere even if it meant subjecting my family to criticism for their sometime rambunctious or different behavior. For some of us it does "take a village to raise a child" and now that I have two great empathetic caring young men as sons, I am so thankful for the communities that helped me and them. Can empathy be taught? I think so! Can we find ways to connect our boys to reality again? Maybe we have a Manchester Disconnect Day once a month where we all leave our electronics at home and work on community service projects with real people. I don't think I have all the answers but I am willing to explore this issue further. I am one mom who wants to see a safer more caring society. Keep the discussion going. What do you think? What can we do?

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