Parenting Matters: When neglect leads to death of someone else, then we take notice

[emilynghiem]

Haruka Weiser’s homicide: What we know about the suspect

Talented 18 year old student on a full scholarship (dual dance major and pre-med)
was assaulted and killed by a homeless 17 year old previously abused in foster care.

Nobody cared about this throwaway kid who was considered expendable, just another statistic. And then his untreated rage and criminal abuse issues result in the death of an innocent person and loss to society of what she planned to contribute to the arts and sciences as an exceptionally talented and well loved student.

Thousands gather to honor Haruka Weiser - The Daily Texan

What a difference it makes to have parental, social and spiritual support.
The difference between life and death!

Haruka Weiser's Former High School Community Remembers University of Texas Student as a 'Brilliant Ballet and Modern Dancer'

You can read in between the lines of the statements by the student's parents and know what compassionate wonderful people and relationships there are, that even shine light in this darkest of tragedies. Even in their shock and grief, they are still all sharing words to uplift, thank and comfort others, to focus on the positive to honor the spirit of this aspiring young lady. Not a single word of anger or hatred, just compassion and reaching out to each other.

Statement by Family of Haruka Weiser

As for the young man, whose story seems all downhill,
Meechaiel Criner: Full Story of Haruka Weiser Murder Suspect

look at the difference when another 'angry young man' does have support to face his challenges of having both parents absent (due to incarceration) and has counseling by peers in the same situation to get through school and go to college instead of jail:
Smiley High grad who beat odds wins national award

Night and day.

Young lives matter. Parenting matters.
Every person, every soul matters.

If we don't help each other overcome our setbacks, our problems repeat, project and escalate and become someone else's problem.

What a heartbreaking tragedy to lose such a stellar young life,
just because someone else didn't receive help in time, not until he killed someone.
So sad.

My prayers to the family and friends, the community reeling for this loss.
May this incident inspire resounding reform in the medical, mental health and
criminal justice system, to take mental and criminal illness seriously as deadly
diseases, not allow people to run around free if they are dangerous, and to
invest resources into early detection, treatment and cure instead of revolving
door warehouses that make money for contractors and pharmaceuticals
at the expense of taxpayers and public health and safety.

Sorry this had to happen to wake more people up.
If something gets done now, maybe this tragedy was not in vain
though the loss will always remain on the public conscience. Unbelievable.

 

[Dhara]

Sad story Emily.

Here's a happy ending one. I foster parented my kids for two and a half years, and adopted them last month.

They are happy and healthy kids now.

Dhara

 

[Alex.]

"Young lives matter. Parenting matters.
Every person, every soul matters."

This truly captures so many of these sad stories.

 

[emilynghiem]

Sad story Emily.

Here's a happy ending one. I foster parented my kids for two and a half years, and adopted them last month.

They are happy and healthy kids now.

Dhara

Thank you, Dhara. I couldn't give you both Winner and Thanks.
Now you have one of both, I'm sure you deserve more!

Thank you for making a difference. It's our relationships that matter in life, that's all we have, so why not make the most of them.

Your kids are lucky to have you. Take care and may all the love you share continue to multiply in abundance, blessing everyone around you. Love and hugs!

 

[Dhara]

Sad story Emily.

Here's a happy ending one. I foster parented my kids for two and a half years, and adopted them last month.

They are happy and healthy kids now.

Dhara

Thank you, Dhara. I couldn't give you both Winner and Thanks.
Now you have one of both, I'm sure you deserve more!

Thank you for making a difference. It's our relationships that matter in life, that's all we have, so why not make the most of them.

Your kids are lucky to have you. Take care and may all the love you share continue to multiply in abundance, blessing everyone around you. Love and hugs!

And you take care too. You have a kind heart and it cares for all human beings without exeption. Even the most troubled who cause harm for others.

I have the utmost respect for your posts.

 

[Granny]

This truly is a sad, sad state in which we're ALL living. Dhara, thank you for taking in your children AND being the kind of person who could "pass the test" on issues of adoption. As someone who lived in an orphanage back in the late 50s-early 60s when verbal abuse, berating, and beatings were a daily thing and the place was essentially a child labor camp I perhaps view things regarding children through a different lens than others. The entire system, from parenting to social services, adoption, education, and more ... is a total f*ed up mess.

 

[Dhara]

Granny--

The system is a mess. I agree. I'd love to hear more about your experiences if it's not to painful to tell them.

I started a thread on Recovery in the Health forum

YOU may want to check it out.

Dhara

 

[Granny]

I've come a long way, Dhara. I like to think of it as a long personal journey and say that I've had an interesting life rather than wallowing in what can't be changed. I've pointed the finger of blame directly at the person responsible and not at everyone else. It's a strange mix of feelings with which I've come to terms. I raised three beautiful children as a single parent ... and despite some errors (or omissions) along the way ... they tell me (and their father told me) that I did a good job. They're all very smart, self-supporting and productive members of society ... and they are very protective of me.

 

[Syriusly]

Sad story Emily.

Here's a happy ending one. I foster parented my kids for two and a half years, and adopted them last month.

They are happy and healthy kids now.

Dhara

Congratulations!

 

[Syriusly]

Sad story Emily.

Here's a happy ending one. I foster parented my kids for two and a half years, and adopted them last month.

They are happy and healthy kids now.

Dhara

Congratulations!

As a follow up- we have friends who were foster parents and adopted- and they are a great family!

I also have other friends who were foster parents- with all of the ups and downs that entailed- I have great respect for those who step up and provide good foster homes to kids in need- my thanks to you.

 

[EverCurious]

My adopted sister was abused by her biological parent families (TWICE - before and after my dad) Cali ended up taking custody of her then my Dad had to jump through a bunch of interstate hoops to adopt her (he lives in ND, isn't her biological father, etc.) but luckily she was old enough to have some say in the matter and he got to adopt her. If she had been a year or so younger he wouldn't have been able to and she'd have been stuck in foster care :/

 

[Granny]

I don't know the personal reasoning for today's adoptions, but it seems like so many people today go out of the country to adopt and leave some deserving American children ignored. The Hollywood set, for sure, is famous for saving the children of other countries. I don't know if it's the ordeal of the social services/adoption system, it's the "trendy" thing to do, they feel like foreign children have it worse than American children or what. I'm not saying they don't love the children they adopt ... but ... well, I don't know.

Way back when, the church affiliated home I was in was not the best place by a long shot, but there were other orphanages that were worse ... because once in awhile a child or two from one of those places (in particular the Baptist home) would end up where I was and the stories they brought with them were horrendous. BUT, unlike much of what goes on today - constantly shifting kids from one place to another - we were there for the duration. We had the continuity and stability of having years together, forming friendships - well frankly - we were brothers and sisters. Our love for each other has endured to this day. We're not in touch with each other regularly, but we think of each other and touch base. We were all good kids to begin with ... caught up in bad situations that brought us together in the same place. And all of us turned out good either because of, or in spite of, what we all went through together in that miserable place.

Out of the hundreds of children (there was never less than 100 kids in that place during our generation - someone would come of age, or graduate from school and leave only to be replaced by someone new arriving - we only knew of ONE person who did any prison time - and we completely understood when we heard his story. He had a neighbor who took a liking to his wife and wouldn't leave her alone ... so he ultimately shot the guy. He didn't kill him, but he did shoot him and he went to prison a few years for doing it. The neighbor sued him. So he and his wife divorced (on paper) but continued to live together and raise their children together, he put everything he owned in his wife's name ... and the neighbor never got a dime. Either way, justice was served.

Don't tell me people in bad situations can't overcome and succeed - I don't buy it.

 

[Katzndogz]

If the victim's family said anything but compassion for the killer they would be persecuted as racists.

The killer was just another sub human dindu who should have been eliminated early on. Now, he's a mindless killer but it's not his fault. He dindu nuffin.

 

[Granny]

If the victim's family said anything but compassion for the killer they would be persecuted as racists.

The killer was just another sub human dindu who should have been eliminated early on. Now, he's a mindless killer but it's not his fault. He dindu nuffin.

What the hell are you talking about? Your post makes no sense whatsoever. Nobody killed anybody in this thread.

 

[Katzndogz]

If the victim's family said anything but compassion for the killer they would be persecuted as racists.

The killer was just another sub human dindu who should have been eliminated early on. Now, he's a mindless killer but it's not his fault. He dindu nuffin.

What the hell are you talking about? Your post makes no sense whatsoever. Nobody killed anybody in this thread.

My mistake. I thought it was about Haruka Weiser's murder.

 

[Granny]

If the victim's family said anything but compassion for the killer they would be persecuted as racists.

The killer was just another sub human dindu who should have been eliminated early on. Now, he's a mindless killer but it's not his fault. He dindu nuffin.

What the hell are you talking about? Your post makes no sense whatsoever. Nobody killed anybody in this thread.

My mistake. I thought it was about Haruka Weiser's murder.

It may be my mistake to have jumped you. If so, I apologize. It's about parenting and Haruka's murder was used as an example of what can happen when children are neglected or thrown away as this man was. Too many children in this country are in this position ... but it's followed up with stories of success and happiness for those who were adopted into loving homes. It's something of a double edged sword, because the neglected child needs to find some seed of hope deep inside that tells them they can do better for themselves than their parents did for them.

 

[Katzndogz]

This dindu has been wasting air for 17 years. It was known early on that he was a mentally deficient sub human. Lock him up in a facility for the criminally insane.

Most probably the dindu's mother was a hard core drug addict that chemically twisted her child's brain.

 

[EverCurious]

The snowflakes today have this misconception that they are special, that they have some kind of grand purpose for their existence. Most religions can focus that innate... "ego" into a generally non-harmful aspect and push folks into living "a good life." Pursuit of financial success also focuses that "ego" into a form of conformity - with acceptable social interactive behavior and what not. Basically these things give people purpose and typically an end goal in their lives.

Problem is that today's society scorns these things and portrays that everyone is a "victim" of something - this focuses that "ego" into "rebellion" of a sorts, against everything and anything that could give them "purpose" or "worth." Thing is, to live in perpetual fear or anger is /why/ we abolished slavery, because it's an inhumane existence, and yet now we choose to /train/ them to live that same inhumanity and at it's core the idea is rather stupid. Be honest, does one really and truly give two shits if some white asshole thousands of miles away doesn't like black people, or gay people, or women? Not really, because it has almost no effect on anything today because we have addressed most of the major discrimination aspects with the constitution - now it's just shades of gray based on how an individual feels about something at that specific moment in time. (For example, there are some days when I want to slap my husband for being an asshole. Should I divorce him because he's occasionally an asshole, or should one simply let it go because we all have bad days? It's unreasonable to expect perfection, at all times, regardless of circumstance - but that is the current demand.)

It's really no surprise to me that people snap under the strain of existence today, they are not being taught a "base" or "core" path, they are not being taught how to cope with adversity, they are not being taught that life is actually not fair at all, never was, and it never will be. They are not being taught to live, they are being taught to suffer, to hate, and to fight persevered "wrongs" that actually don't effect them. Worse, perhaps, the conditioning of such an existence hyper-inflates the emotional response to "negatives" - if one believes they should be insulted, though they're not, they tend to over-act their reactions to compensate. So you end up with someone having what should be just a "bad day" instead hyper inflating everything to a point of a catastrophic melt down. Almost all of these crimes are, in the perpetrators mind, seeking resolution for some "wrong" - from "I deserve more" concepts to "they're racist" concepts. It is no wonder that folks brought up in a suffer/hate/fight society sometimes elect to turn that "ego" into "I can make a difference by killing this person" or "I can change my lot in life" or martyrdom.

It is our own fault for training this behavior into them, one cannot bitch about its "side effects."

 

[Katzndogz]

These severely damaged children cannot be brought into an ordinary home. The first thing will be vandalism, they will kill household pets or neighbor's pets. That's how it starts, with animals. Then there will be fires. Before an actual murder, there will be attempts and injuries to siblings. Threats to parents.

Along about teen age the blood starts flowing.

So this here dindu was right on schedule.

 

[EverCurious]

Sorry had a browser lock up - wasn't quite done heh

When these same folks become parents, they perpetuate the same flaws, and worse they themselves do not have the confidence and optimism to raise children /out/ of the permanent "victimhood" of /their/ existence. Unlike "ego" focuses like religion and financial success - which tends to collate into a parenting style that portrays their child having a better life than they did.

It's not really, or at least not merely, that they are "bad parents" or anything, they simply do not have the tools required because these things were never taught to them. One cannot teach what one does not know, if one does not know "optimism" then they cannot teach their child it - which means that their child must find it themselves, if they are able - and given the negativity of today's society, they often do not find it....