Houston has had a rash of gang-related killings. It’s getting harder to keep track of, but according to the Chronicle, we’re at six, now, in the last three weeks.
Understandably, the community is concerned. “What’s happening to our children?”, they’re wondering.
Polimom has some very bad news:
Children do not jump one another with baseball bats, tire irons, and knives, kids do not go from “chatting with friends” to unloading five shots with a semiautomatic handgun, innocent boys don’t argue with guns stuffed into their baggy pants, and sweet girls do not stab someone in a park.
I can’t figure out the reporting on these stories, in which descriptions change from “teens” to “youths” to “kids” to “children”, sometimes in the same sentence. These words are not synonymous!
When Polimom uses “kid“, she pictures a boy with freckles and a baseball mitt – not a bat with bloodstains.
When I say “children“, I think of kindergarten, innocence, and wonder at the world. I don’t think of friends standing around a grave at the cemetery with baggy pants and flinty-eyed anger.
There’s a reason the English language developed several nouns to describe the phases and aspects of life, and Polimom thinks it would be far more helpful if we stopped confusing these disconnected and dangerous young people with labels that don’t fit.
Labeling teenagers is dangerous; I understand that. The labeling theory is at the heart of sealed criminal records for juveniles, and it makes sense.
But there’s a yin for every yang, and attempting to “normalize” those who shoot, stab, and murder one another with terms like “children” also taints those kids who do not fall prey to the deadly traps of peer pressure and dismal self-esteem.
Killers aren’t kids. They’re killers.
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