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City Hall175 East 200 NorthSt. George, UT 84770(435) 627-4000
| November 21, 2009 |
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Kids: You Gotta Love 'em Kids have a special place in my heart. I recall many contacts that I have had with them over the years. I remember one very disorderly young lady (and I use the description very loosely) who wouldn't go home. Her mother called and told us where she was. I picked her up and for the next five minutes got a verbal tirade that would have made a sailor blush. I interrupted her, told her that I didn't want to talk to her and that if she wanted to be treated like an adult, she should speak and act like one, that I would not tolerate any more of her verbal abuse and to use her right to remain silent. Five minutes went by, she started asking questions and we had a good conversation. A very intelligent girl that no one had invested any time in, I thought to myself. I told her that her mother loved her, that parents don't have all the answers, that we make mistakes and that she should sit down with her mom and have a heart-to-heart talk in normal conversational tones, not to raise her voice and not to accuse, but to voice her concerns to her mother and ask her advice. As we arrived at her house, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked "Why doesn't my mom talk to me this way?" I called a lady at work to come get her child at school. She very loudly told me that she was not to be interrupted at work and that she didn't have time to deal with her kid, that her child was the responsibility of the school and not to call her anymore at work. She told us that we just needed to deal with it. I also called a lady in the Salt Lake area after we had arrested her daughter for drinking under age. I told her that her daughter was in St. George for Spring Break and that she needed to either come get her daughter or tell us who we could release her to. She hung up on me. I called back and she told me not to wake her up anymore, to do whatever we wanted with her daughter, that she was going back to sleep. She wouldn't answer the phone when we called back. We ended up releasing the daughter the next morning at 7 without having any parental release information. We need to teach our kids. We need to take time with them. They are our FIRST and PRIMARY responsibility. After all, isn't that exactly why we go to work? To support our families? We work so hard for our families, sometimes at the expense of the very thing we are working for. School bus drivers are plagued with kids who don't know how to respect others' rights and property. Officers get calls from parents who want them to come and take away their children because they can't or don't want to deal with them anymore. Kids are becoming victims of crime because they don't have the mental or physical tools that they need in various situations. They need to be taught principles and then given situations to apply these principles. When we make the decisions for the child, they learn the wrong lesson: they learn to continue to come to us for the decision. If we teach them the principle, then they apply it and we can correct the application and they become a self-reliant, functional adult. I know many non-functional adults that have not learned to correctly apply principles. Think of when you were growing up. What would have happened if the officer called your father or mother to inform them about something they caught you doing (and now we call it child abuse.) Now it is not uncommon for the parents to take the side of the child. Many children fail to see consequences for their actions, and thus have no reason to alter their behavior. We bail them out of the situation, we get them off, we become angry at the officer, the teacher, the bus driver for "picking on my child." We transfer the blame and the responsibility to others. We buy "babysitters" in various forms for our kids while we work more hours to pay for them. Our kids need us. They want our time. And they will become exactly like the examples we show them (never mind that we tell them a different thing). These children are our responsibility. We need to teach them respect for others and others' property, respect for our elders, to stop when the national anthem is being played, to open the door for an elderly lady, the car door for their mother, that the house and the school and the city belongs to them, to pick up the pop can (who cares whose it is). We need to teach them responsibility, that if they do something wrong they need to own up to it, work through it, put it behind them and realize that we all make mistakes. Rather than save them from the situation and the consequences, we need to help them through it and to be there when they get done. We need to love them. That's the bottom line. And it's up to us. Craig Harding Public Information Officer St. George Police Department |
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