How Parents Enable Their Children to Bully
Joshua Ostroff
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Posted 04.20.2013
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Canada Living
Read More:
Online Bullying,
Bullying Canada,
Bullying Prevention,
Bullying Death,
Bullying,
Rehtaeh Parsons Bullying,
Rehtaeh Parsons Suicide,
Cyber Bullying,
Bullying Suicide,
Canada Living News
Glen Canning, wrote a blog about his daughter, Rehtaeh Parsons, who hung herself because of the trauma of an alleged gang-rape by four classmates and the relentless bullying that followed. He wrote, "They say parents need to teach their children. Instead, it was Rehtaeh who was my teacher." But here's the thing: Parents do need to teach their children, and they are not doing it. Rehtaeh Parsons' death arrives on the horrific heels of the Steubenvile high-school rape case and Amanda Todd's suicide near Vancouver last fall after a sexually explicit photo led to the bullying that eventually drove her to take her own life, too. Our job is not just to feed and clothe our kids, but to shape them.
It's now been two weeks since the tragic, allegedly bullying-induced suicide of B.C. teenager Amanda Todd first made headlines around the world, but if the steady output of Canadian editorial pages is any indication, there's still much to say. It's hard to deny the sheer poetic justice in the volume of sympathy and thoughtfulness born from the aftermath of an episode of such overbearing nihilism and cruelty. Not that some haven't gone too far, of course.
