It is stupid for supposedly intelligent persons so flippantly to blame parents of children who murder or bring any other mayhem to society. Yet this is the harangue. Recall such relates to the massacre in Colorado.

"These parents are at fault."

"Someone needs to get to these parents and tell them that they have to control their children. I blame the parents!"

"What's going on with these parents of these killers? What's going on in their homes?"

"The parents must have known about the arsenals that were built up inside their own houses!"

And so it goes. . .on and on and on.

This is the height of hubris, of naivete'.

When I was younger and saw children acting up so as to be disobedient, I would say to my wife on occasion: "If those were MY children, I would do thus and thus."

And how often have I heard adults of no children or young children make that same pontifical declaration. Have you said it?

However, after having raised three children, I would never lower my intelligence so as to give forth with such nonsense moralizing. Further, such high-sounding statements only serve to add pain to parents who already are fearing for their lives because of what their adolescent children are threatening at home base.

I know that parents with teens out of control cannot dump those offspring on any agency of society. Nevertheless, the brutal fact is that in too many homes in our culture there are indeed strong-willed youth who daily are so potentially treacherous that their own mothers and fathers fear for their very lives.

Many of these parents do not abuse their children, do not misuse drugs, are not alcoholics, are not indecent nor obscene nor irresponsible. They are at home. They are bringing in the salary check to pay the bills. They have tried to create a lifestyle of morality and care.

Nevertheless, sometimes there are offspring who simply reject all of that decency for their own selfish devilment--and such can include threatening their own parents' and siblings' existences.

When Cain killed his brother, Abel, was it Adam's fault? Did God rail against Eve? No, Cain was responsible for his own misdeed; therefore, God chastised Cain alone. There are many Cains who have lived since, and too many alive today.

Therefore, for panel members, broadcasters and politicians to get on television to continually ask naively, "Where were the parents in all of this?", obviously is to reveal their own uninformed and insensitive lives.

Those of us in the work of living and the study of counseling families know all too well that there are untold numbers of extremely concerned parents who simply cannot bend their children's wills toward the right. Those parents wish to God that they could; but they cannot because each child has his own final power of choice.

Further, and this is most significant: when a culture such as ours sets loose one violent movie, video, musical lyric, "entertainment" after another which proclaims blood and guts as a legitimate past time, then many of our children opt for all of that hatred and insanity rather than being appreciative of the loving homes from which they come.

There is an extremely dark magnet which has been manufactured in our land by evil persons who want money from our youth rather than providing them with the good, kind and beautiful. Therefore, all the parents' pleas in the world cannot retract some of our precious children away from that vicious magnet, no matter how hard the parents may try.

Therefore, our society will continue to experience more of the painful scenes of Littleton until we reach the point of absolute abhorrence of all that is violent--putting an end to it in "entertainment".

The hope is that we will not so soon forget our recent agony, going our pleasant summer ways, only to reap more onslaughts in schools due to our denial of the fact of violence spread throughout subcultures in our midst.

Do not then waste your words on how undisciplined and brainless scores of parents are when their children run amuck. Instead, spend your energies on creating a society that has rid itself of its own violent allowances.

J. Grant Swank, Jr.