Posted on 02/23/2009 12:11:39 PM PST by christianhomeschoolmommaof3
PITTSBURGH — A jail warden said Sunday he will ask a judge to move an 11-year-old boy accused of killing his father's pregnant girlfriend from an adult lockup to a juvenile detention center because the jail cannot accommodate the boy.
snip
Patricia Papernow, a psychologist from Hudson, Mass., and expert on blended families, said tensions from combining families, as Brown's father and Houk were doing, were "pretty normal in a new stepfamily."
"It looks awful from the outside and sort of unspeakable, but these are the kinds of feelings that are pretty normal in a new stepfamily," Papernow said. "You just hope there's not a loaded gun around."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
They should be treated as criminals if they kill people.
So is this psychologist speaking out to try to get no-fault divorce laws changed, or trying to get adults to work harder on their marriages instead of jumping ship and trying the next 'sweet thing' to come along? No?
Didn't think so.
Hidden in this story of an 11 year old sociopath or psychopath is an appeal for gun control. How tiring.
While I agree this child should not be housed with adult prisoners in a regular prison, he definitely needs to be incarcerated.
I didnt think it was hidden. Check keywords!
I’m quite sure that YOUR son can control his feelings better than this, but he’s also not confronted with the sort of anger-provoking challenges this little boy has been, nor has he been raised by irresponsible adults. I’m sure more details will be forthcoming about this family, and I’m sure they won’t be pretty.
And I wouldn’t be so sure that this boy really understood the finality of death, that was likely to result from pulling the trigger. He didn’t appear to have any sort of plan for “what next?”. Just got on the school bus. Didn’t seem to be thinking in terms of consequences, unless perhaps he was so angry and miserable at home that he did something he knew would get him taken out of there, and didn’t care about anything beyond that.
The biggest surprise in this statement, is that Ms. Papernow's name isn't hyphenated.
I agree with your assessment above. I'm a homeschool mom of three, too. :-) Three sons, and the middle one is 11. I cannot imagine my 11yo ever committing such a crime, but not all children are sweet and innocent. Some are cruel and mean. Assuming this boy is guilty, I'm struck by the fact that he hopped onto a schoolbus after killing his pregnant stepmother, as if he wasn't even bothered by what he'd just done. It doesn't seem he was confused or upset by what he'd done. If he's not punished for a long time, he will expect to always be excused for his crimes. He should be put away for a long time.
I want to know more about his family background before saying he needs to be incarcerated. Where’s his mother? Meth addict? And how come none of the adults in this kid’s life seemed to have a clue that he was about to completely lose it? Just ignoring him, no matter how many red flggs he waved in front of them? Picture your sister eight months pregnant, and her eleven year old stepson tells you he wants to kill her. Would you not be taking some action, at least telling your sister, who in turn would presumably see to it that the kid didn’t have ready access to a loaded gun? There’s so much wrong with this picture that I can’t see holding an eleven old primarily responsible for the tragic outcome.
Your original post said that he is eleven, he cannot begin to control himself and then went on to say that he looks younger. That says to me that you think young children arent responsible for their actions. The reason they arent responsible is because society doesnt hold them responsible. Keeping this eleven year old from the responsibility of what he did will only further his path toward destructive behaviour. Basically you are saying because noone taught him to control himself, we should do nothing to him. That only teaches him that he doesnt need to control himself.
Apparently his 7 year old stepsister was likewise not confused or upset about the fact that a shotgun blast had just gone off inside her home, since she just hopped on the school bus too, and the police didn’t get notified until the tree trimmers called from the house. There are clearly a LOT of missing pieces to this story.
Obviously he needs some extremely close guidance and supervision over the next several years. I’m not saying we should “do nothing”, but I think when all the facts come to light, it’s going to be clear that this boy’s outrageous act was the result of growing up in an outrageous situation. It seems to me that a therapy-oriented home for troubled children would be appropriate, but not any sort of prison. He needs to be taught how to control himself, not punished for failing to control himself before anybody had bothered to teach him how.
We don’t know all the details, yet. But, assuming he’s guilty: If he got on a schoolbus right afterward, that shows he lacks empathy for other people. He had no feelings for his stepmother nor her unborn baby. At 11, he’s old enough to know right from wrong and to have empathy for people. And, if his father is seeking to have him released and put back into school, that makes me wonder if this boy has been disciplined much.
Teaching a child to control themselves begins by appropriate discipline when they dont control themselves. My 2 year old screams for a toy so I withhold the toy and tell her that she must control herself and next time she must ask nicely. I do not give her the toy and then tell her to ask nicely next time. She got what she wanted by being out of control so why should she learn to control herself? This boy must be punished for killing someone. If you dont punish him, how will you teach him to control his behaviour. He already got away with it then. What deterrent do you think you can offer him, if you let him get away with murder?
Why would anyone point blame at the 7yo girl? She’s not a suspect. If she knew that the boy had shot her mother, and she got onto the bus, too, then maybe some psychological help is in order. But, she’s not a suspect in this case.
But it needs to begin before age 11, when things like screaming for a toy are the limit of misbehavior. Otherwise it’s completely unfair to expect self-control. This boy’s father is apparently eager to post bail to get the boy sprung so he can come home and go back to school as usual! This tells me that the boy has simply not been exposed to normal teaching and discipline, and thus can’t reasonably be held responsible for having failed to absorb and apply such lessons. Also makes me wonder just a little whether the boy is actually the one who pulled the trigger, or whether he may have been put up to it by his father. It’s one thing for a parent in this situation to want the child out of prison and into a therapeutic child-appropriate environment, but HOME? Right after he blew away your 8 months pregnant girlfriend?
When it comes to the real dynamics of "families" like this, the 11-year-old was evidently more perceptive than the so-called expert from Massachusetts.
I’m not pointing blame at her, just pointing out that her behavior suggests a seriously bizarre home environment.
The woman was pregnant, but she was definitely not this boy's "stepmother," nor was that bunch of folks sharing a house with him his "family."
Are you saying that the boy’s father wasn’t married officially to the woman pregnant with his child? That is no excuse for this 11yo’s crime. There are plenty of couples living together with their children from other marriages, and even though they may be wrong to live together without marriage, that does not explain an 11yo boy committing this crime.
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