“About one in three high school students have been or will be involved in an abusive relationship.” p. 70. One in three high school students -- are the statistics really that high? We educate our children about right and wrong behavior. We tell them that no one, absolutely no one, is allowed to hit them. How can one out of three children not get it? They are either the hitters or the hittee, but they don’t get it. Keep your hands to yourself. How many times does a parent or teacher say that to a child? So many that it amazes me that one out of three still will hit or be hit.
As I read this letter to Rihanna on pages 71-73, again, I am astonished. I guess that’s why I chose this passage to blog about. This young writer is asking Rihanna how she can dump Chris because he really loves her. Rihanna is the pretty one, the talented one. It is so hard for poor Chris to be dumped like that after he beat you.
He apologized in a video and put himself “out there.” “That’s what happens after. I mean they feel so bad. They don’t have anyone to help them. They don’t know how to talk.” Who has brainwashed this girl? She has the mentality that it’s okay to take the beating because “they feel so bad” afterwards. She thinks this behavior is love! Pain and hurt is not love. It is just that – pain and hurt. It is heinous and disgusting, certainly in no way love.
She goes on to say that her mother hates Brad (writer’s boyfriend) because she is judging him on this one aspect of his personality. That would be enough for me as a father. Brad has this young girl believing that somehow she deserves this treatment because she’s not perfect either. She feels that Rihanna deserved the beating she got from Chris because she threw his keys and made him angry. She made him feel bad about himself and that’s why he hit her.
That’s the way this young girl was raised – with a father that said someone was always asking for it. Yet seeing sadness in her father’s face and seeing sadness in Brad’s face bothers her so much that she feels they are justified in hitting her.
I know in today’s society there isn’t the respect given to women they once enjoyed. But what are parents teaching their children about self-respect. You can’t respect yourself as the abused or the abuser. If the parents aren’t educating these children, what about the school system? I agree that too much is being passed off to the schools, but these are life and death issues. I don’t believe it would be necessary to have a full term of domestic violence training; however, a guest speaker twice a year, every year, to talk with the high school students about both ends of this spectrum is a good place to start. No one living in this country in the year 2011 should even remotely feel that it is okay to give or to take the beating. Something needs to change if this is truly how our young people are feeling.
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