Unsolicited Parental ADVICE

5 min readOct 15, 2022

Prayers ABOUT Violence and Guns and children Shooting people and Getting Shot!

I hadn’t posted a blog in a while, and I was nearly done in waxing and waning on my hopes and dreams and the necessity of returning to the workplace after four years of blissful busy retirement. It’s open season in Medicare land and I had turned off the phone and TV to click the computer on FOCUS on writing and finishing touches and just broke down.

One benefit of having more time, I get to write and be a poet and have opinions about all sorts of things. I was finishing up the edits and getting so distracted and bothered by thinking about a 15-year-old shooting and killing folks in a nice neighborhood on the greenway in North Carolina as if the location really mattered. That horror competing with morality police correcting public misbehavior and killing a young woman visiting from out of town.

I am a mom of two and a grandmother of five and what I loathe is unsolicited parental advice and prayer from even well-meaning folks telling you what to do. What is your failing and implying explicitly that it must be your fault and responsibility & why what you did or didn’t do had a bad impact on your child. Crime and punishment, blame and shame, simple math! Everyone knows that this is the case but you big dummies, as if more guilt and shame would help are just not smart enough and things were better back in the day when…. (fill in the blank)

If there is the one extreme of the helicopter parents hoovering dangerously close; then so be it. Then and there is the lackadaisical extreme of the the neglectful clueless addicted single mom who may certainly care but can’t cope. Too little supervision or too many children.

The very children my grandmother would shake her head and hum about indicating to us with a frown they were just a bit better off than orphans or weeds growing wildly in the field with no home training while saying of course they could stay for dinner and take a plate home. Of course, we are justified in our disdain. We have the ultimate and final solution!

Both my parents were raised by mothers who lost their mothers very early on and they were super-attentive and we thought very meddlesome always vowing to make up for what they didn’t have and what most of us might want. They did their best, like we hope most parents do with what they have to work with and who is standing by to fill in the gaps.

I read A LOT but was today dumb-struck that there was an advice column on a guide to help to determine when your child was ready for a cellphone juxtaposed with the 15 year old who surprisingly was still alive and had not killed themselves nor had the child been injured or killed by anyone else or the police and yet clearly identified as the gunman.

Assuming everyone is armed except me, that surprised me and piqued my curiosity and tearful anguish. We have another 15 year old on trial here in my home state along with his parents in a separate trial for another ghastly school shooting also coincidently in a very nice neighborhood.

As hypocritical as I am, I do have another blog where I post on the maternal experience of nursing your baby and how somehow the attachment and maternal relationship will make a difference in your life if that’s your heart’s desire. No coercion, no judging, just can I help a sister out that wants to have a baby and be close for at least that year without being torn in so many directions. I want to be the expert in something. Something maybe just one good thing I did.

https://breastfeeding365.com/category/nursing-for-one-year/

What I want to say is that I am having a really hard time and don’t know what to do. I hope and pray that we will care for each other, adopt a teen even earlier on and prevent anymore grief, bloodshed and violence.

I wrote a poem about adopting a 17 year old; https://jacqueline-laughlin.medium.com/adopt-a-17-year-old-today-e65214ef3ac I will have to amend and lower the age limit on that and extend intergenerational compassion for all age groups or everyone all the time when we can.

Look around again in your circle for that mom or a dad or teacher or caregiver or grand or be something that would make a difference. Zip codes and school districts and party affiliation notwithstanding.

Somehow in the midst of banning the bad people, books and abortions, we would as vigorously ban meanness and anger and quick-tempered rage and the kind of isolation and thoughts that only option A is we would harm ourselves and take a whole bunch of folks with us.

Alumni would not be so traumatized by what happened in the classroom or at home and take a life. The same schools that spawn brilliant teachers, and musicians, and artists, doctors and nurses, and good honest workers, caring folks and supreme court judges, and athletes, and really good people would rise up to leave no one behind when struggling cause we would be paying attention not just in hindsight. The mother who walked her babies into the ocean didn’t need a gun.

Where might we feel some hope and freedom from the unending despair? I was momentarily happy that another teen was spared the death penalty as if that would bring back one child. It seemed so difficult yet humane that they factored in factors they could not account for the mystery of the unknown.

I know that there is not one of us who would hesitate to kill someone who threatened someone we loved even if it meant never having a moment’s peace thereafter.

No mother or father wants their child harmed or their child to harm anyone. We have got to figure this out and hold each other accountable in a deep embrace. The murdered have gone on and we are forever deeply wounding the ones left behind. Bullets ricocheted and what we now euphemistically call collateral damage for the ones and places that are trying desperately to recover.

Bullets and trauma and unending grief threaten us to believe we don’t care, and nothing can be done. One person can make a difference in the smallest of ways! Tonight, I must believe that!

I bought books today early Christmas presents for the little ones in my life to remind them of the precious time we can spend together doing nothing special. Who will tell your story when you’re gone!

Like today, I believe that all our prayers are heard and answered right now. It’s all I got! My

Deepest condolences, may you be comforted and forgive me for unsolicited advice.

NOTES…… to click on if you want more…. information…or just to read more if it might help

15 year old active shooter

https://www.kcra.com/article/raleigh-north-carolina-active-shooting/41617172#

guide for the cell phone for your kid

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/13/guide-child-phone/

Who will tell your story?

here’s the song address:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gnypiKNaJE

Gun violence archives

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org