School violence - Essay Example

To start with, single parents have increased tremendously. There many different studies that use single parents to demonstrate the effects children have of not being exposed to both a maternal and paternal figure. However, single parents are not just people whose spouses have passed away and the family is left to cope with the loss. Single parents can be divorcee, widowed, or have never even been married. Not being exposed to a paternal and maternal figure can lead to many mental disturbances, provoking violent and unacceptable behavior.

On 22nd March of 2005, a 17 year old Jeff Weise terrorized the Minnesota school. It was one of the worst school shootouts recorded in history. A few students were injured but more horrifying was the fact that some students had actually lost their lives. Jeff Weise had also shot himself after a shootout with the police ("Massacre in Minnesota"). Before coming to school, Jeff had shot his grandfather and his grandfather's 32-year-old girlfriend. Jeff was categorized by his schoolmates as antisocial.

No doubt, Jeff himself had lived a rather depressing life. His father committed suicide four years back and his mother got into an auto accident which placed her in the nursery. Jeff was living with his grandfather who was on the force. This kind of absurdity exists because certain kids are lacking the attention they need. In Jeff's case, he was lacking a lot of attention. After his father committed suicide, when Jeff was only thirteen-years-old, Jeff had most probably not been able to fully cope and recover from that traumatic experience.

In a Psychology article by Lawrence J. Walker, this kind of behavior is called as an outcry for help (Walker 1997). When kids do not get the attention they crave, no other choice is left but to resort to negative attention. The negative attention is the only way these kids get any attention at all. The more parents neglect their children or fail to understand what it is that their children want, the higher are the chances that these children will join the wrong crowd and try getting negative attention.

Another way single parents are contributing to the lack of attention given to the children is by giving in to the children's demands. Propaganda in advertising is targeted for these children of single parents. When a child sees the big yellow M sign and the happy smiling face of Ronald, they usually scream with delight, "McDonald!" It is difficult for a single parent to refuse to the demands their child is making. This is not just because the parent is showing affection, but rather because by refusing the child, the parent will have to deal with a lot of fuss and tantrums that is timing consuming.

And time is one thing that single parents really do not have. This leads to the child maintaining a habit of unhealthy food and even worse, of getting anything it desires. The child from an early age has learned be assertive. This is a good quality as being opposed to having a low self-esteem, but in some cases, this kind of assertiveness reappears as the child goes to school and bullies the other children. The purpose of this paper is of course not to bash single parents but rather to show that some single parents are not giving their children the attention the child needs.

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