Friday, March 6, 2009

Open Letter Friday


Polymer Clay Snails is having a new MeMe… and I love the idea!


It is called Open Letter Friday.


Write a letter, to anyone. Sister, parent, crazy driver, coffee house person who takes 15 minutes to order one drink, in the morning, with 10 people in line AND is on the phone. (This is more like an obituary at that point.)


So… here is mine. It’s been on my mind all day, and is fitting.

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This is a disturbing video, please do not let your little ones see this.

My letter is in response to this video.

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Dear Parents of child in Kalamazoo, MI.,

Your son beat a middle aged bus driver 18 times in 24 seconds.


Your teenage son beat a bus driver because he was angry about a stop she made.


The son you raised beat a middle aged woman so severely it broke her hand, gave her

two black eyes, stitches and forced THREE other students to hold him back.


You said he was provoked by the bus driver? That he is not to blame.


How dare you blame this poor bus driver for your child’s actions. You should be ashamed of yourselves.


He is not to blame? Are you kidding me? Who is?


The twins living in his head? (He is schizophrenic and bi-polar)

The mental illness he has?


Your son has been taken out of your care “because parents cannot meet the juvenile's needs for structure and/or supervision given mental health issues and/or special needs of the juvenile” (taken from mlive.com).


This young man of yours has four prior accounts of violence against women; I wonder where he learned this behavior?


Take responsibility for your child, you know he is a danger; it is not something that is news to you.


Signed,

Someone who works with bus drivers everyday

Someone whos best friends are bus drivers

Someone who hears about the lives of bus drivers everyday, and has realized if some parents just paid more attention, there would be less issues.

4 comments:

Joanna said...

Wow...I didn't know anything about this...I can't believe the blame is on the bus driver! That is CRAZY!!!

Anonymous said...

Unbelievable!!

God help this bus driver's family ... my stomach jumped with every blow the poor thing! I can't stand -- CAN'T STAND -- parents that make excuses like his ... They absolutely need to take responsibility ... that kid's an f-ing nightmare that will one day meet his match ... who will they blame then ...

Great great - SUPER - "open letter" post" ... thanks for participating and helping to promote it!

Alexis AKA MOM said...

OMG I haven't heard this until now! That is just horrible.

My grandmother is a retired bus driver and some of her best friends are retired or still driving bus. This really made me want to cry.

Why is it that parents can't take responsibility? You can't just say oh it's his disease. I had a uncle that was bi-polar who was a wonderful person when he took his meds. The rest of time he could get in trouble and when he did my grandparents let him take responisbilty of that! I'm sorry to say he ended taking his own life, but had a lot of time that he was sorry for and did a lot of appologizing!

One more thing when my house got the front door kicked in by a punk 18 yr/old that told the judge he needed money for the prom! Whatever, his parents did the same thing. So what he gets let out and robbed two more house! Thankfully I wasn't home, who knows what he would have done with the crowbar. What is wrong????

Randolph Hill said...

Wow, you know when you see this on tv or youtube, you pray they are only acting, but because I have a fiance that is a teacher and several friends that are teachers and bus drivers, I know it to be true.

The saddest thing is if the bus driver would have say, defender herself by knocking the kid out, then she would have gotten in trouble and could've lost her job.

There is a sad undercurrent in America where parents aren't taking responsibility for their children. They should bring back the old law that puts the parents in jail, even if its for one day or a week, for what their juvenile deliquent children do.