Listen to the children

People who remember childhood as an idyllic time in their lives were never really children. They don't remember being a kid is hard, and that's part of the reason why the growing number of school shootings in suburban communities is still a mystery. \n Santana High School is just the last school to become part of a growing trend. It is part of a question with no answers. Yet, there are plenty of theories.\nExperts want to blame the entertainment industry or the easy access kids have to guns. But these theories are skirting the bigger issue. \nIt appears that kids are having a tougher and tougher time dealing with being kids. \nMy own voyage to the plateau of "not-so-well-adjusted young man" is one I will not soon forget. I lived in New York, Texas and Illinois before I was 16.\nAnd if you don't think moving was tough on me, then you probably don't realize that those states are about as different as they sound. \nThere really is something to being the new kid. Especially when you're a kid who is scared of his own shadow. \nI was still in a weird phase when I entered my last new school. My weight was having a tough time catching up with the rest of me. I was about 5'9 and 130 pounds. I couldn't have fought my way out of a paper bag.\nI also had a head that was a little too big for my neck, legs that were too long for my body and elbows that were too big for my arms. I thought I was one of Dr. Moreau's rejects.\nI was not exactly happy with who I was back then. Sometimes I wished I was someone else. I really think my sophomore year in high school was the toughest.\nThere are times growing up when you feel like you're alone. You feel like you're the only kid being picked on or you feel like the problems you're having are the only ones that exist. And there are times when you feel like your life couldn't get any worse. \nYou want to lash out at the people who are going through life with an ease you will never experience. You want to do something to make them take notice of you, and you want them to know you're important, too.\nAnd this is the thought process all the gunmen in the school shootings seem to have in common. They have an urge to share their pain with others, and violence is the only means they think will work.\nWhat these kids need to realize, and what adults should be focusing on, is that they are not alone. For every kid who wakes up thinking he's got it together, there are at least 10 who are wrapped in a blanket of insecurity.\nAnd for parents to figure out which kid they have, they need to stop talking to their congressman about violence on television, put the phone down and talk to the kid who just ran in the front door.\nParents are the keys in helping kids grow into adults. My parents always helped me see that childhood was not the end of it all. They showed me it was only a phase I would eventually grow out of. They told me feeling left out was not going to be typical for the rest of my life.\nI don't know if I believed them back then, but they were right. It wasn't long before the parts of my body started to work together instead of against each other. I eventually made it out of childhood.\nEvery kid should make it to this point. They should all be able to look back and laugh at how strange it was to be a kid. This is a healthy way of doing things.\nThe unhealthy way is what happened at Santana High School. Kids should never be forced to grow up at gunpoint. Childhood is already tough enough.