Two 16-year-old girls have been arrested after a credible threat was made to Mountain Vista High School, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.
On Saturday, the sheriff’s office said it was made aware of the threat at the Highlands Ranch school. Investigators determined it was a credible threat and led to the arrest of the girls.
The 16-year-olds have been arrested and face pending charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Ugh. What is happening to youth that would make them do this kind of thing?
This is highly unusual for it to be 2 females plotting this together.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
In the old days (I can't believe I said that) girls would try to destroy the reputation of others, not plot your murder.
That said, I have ideas about what is partially causing these things. One, of course, would be mental illness. The other is finding out the circumstances of their early years and examining their bonding and attachment process. You might think I'm out to lunch on this, but I do believe there are attachment disorders at work in our youth (not all of our youth, of course) and I believe they're tied directly to the early years.
I don't want anyone to take offense to this (probably someone will) but the propensity of our society to place 6 week old infants in long term child care programs is what I think might be at the root of these incidents. In short, I think we're screwing up our children in favor of the almighty dollar.
I also think there is a sense of isolation at work here. In the old days (I said it again!), families typically lived near each other or in some cases, in the same house. I think there was more support (and sometimes interference!) to parents of young children in terms of grand parents being present to help and advise. Even if the advice wasn't taken, the support was there. I think that families today have lost that sense of connectedness. That sense of connectedness is part of what supports healthy attachment and bonding.
Speaking of losing a sense of connectedness, I think that social media plays a large part in that. In one of my administration classes years ago, we covered the impact of impersonal/electronic communication on staff in the work place when it takes the place of face-to-face communication. The potential for a build up of hostility due to impersonal interactions is real.
I think the same can be said for social media.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
Jersey Girl wrote:In the old days (I can't believe I said that) girls would try to destroy the reputation of others, not plot your murder.
That said, I have ideas about what is partially causing these things. One, of course, would be mental illness. The other is finding out the circumstances of their early years and examining their bonding and attachment process. You might think I'm out to lunch on this, but I do believe there are attachment disorders at work in our youth (not all of our youth, of course) and I believe they're tied directly to the early years.
I don't want anyone to take offense to this (probably someone will) but the propensity of our society to place 6 week old infants in long term child care programs is what I think might be at the root of these incidents. In short, I think we're screwing up our children in favor of the almighty dollar.
I also think there is a sense of isolation at work here. In the old days (I said it again!), families typically lived near each other or in some cases, in the same house. I think there was more support (and sometimes interference!) to parents of young children in terms of grand parents being present to help and advise. Even if the advice wasn't taken, the support was there. I think that families today have lost that sense of connectedness. That sense of connectedness is part of what supports healthy attachment and bonding.
Speaking of losing a sense of connectedness, I think that social media plays a large part in that. In one of my administration classes years ago, we covered the impact of impersonal/electronic communication on staff in the work place when it takes the place of face-to-face communication. The potential for a build up of hostility due to impersonal interactions is real.
I think the same can be said for social media.
While one out of every one of is neurotic, and two out of every one of us is schizophrenic. I don't agree that psychopathy can account for most, let alone all, criminal acts.
I want to briefly expand on what I said about 6 week old infants in child care programs.
Based on what I do know about child development, it is critical for an infant to bond with at least one caregiver. The attachment and bonding process is dependent on the faithful and consistent responses of the caregiver to the infant's cries. There's a name for this, primary circular reactions. Essentially, the infant cries, the caregiver responds.
The caregiver might not always get it right, but the point is that the caregiver responds.
This is exactly how the trust bond is created. The call for help, the response, the tone of voice, the ways in which the caregiver soothes the infant. The infant becomes bonded to all of those features of the caregiver. If there are two caregivers who provide care, the child bonds to both--in their own home, in their own bed, in their own environment, with the same consistent responses, the same voice tones, the same smells, the same sounds, the same sensory input.
When a child at age 6 weeks is taken to child care, they're confronted with one or more caregivers dividing their responses between multiple infants. Everything the child has learned to trust and depend upon--changes. Everything suddenly becomes unpredictable. And, while an infant can certainly bond and attach to another caregiver or caregivers, I believe that the depth of the bond is diminished and compromised.
I'm sad to say (bear with me) that I worked in a high quality child development program that included infants age 6 weeks. I'd never witnessed this before because previously, my teaching practice was limited to schools. Keep in mind that this particular program was nationally accredited and enjoyed a high rating in term of quality.
In the first weeks of semester, I would walk in the front door across from where the nursery was located and hear infants crying and screaming for hours, days and weeks on end. I'm talking about infants (6 weeks to 12 months) wailing up from their little guts. I'm talking about this going on all day long, every single day, for weeks on end.
Those were distress cries.
There is little anyone could do to tell me that didn't compromise the infants emotional/psychological development. And there's little anyone could do to convince me that the violence we're seeing in today's youth isn't directly related to compromised attachment and bonding. Either via early placement in child care (most of which is rated substandard in the U.S. at one time is was 80% of all child care programs) or lack of mentoring for new parents by family members.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
Educating everyone is expensive. Most of my female colleagues work 6 day weeks trying to pay back their student loan debt. I tend to think our culture of serial monogamy isn't the best environment for children either.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
ajax18 wrote:Educating everyone is expensive. Most of my female colleagues work 6 day weeks trying to pay back their student loan debt. I tend to think our culture of serial monogamy isn't the best environment for children either.
Keep'em barefoot, and pregnant. Why barefoot? It keeps them two inches closer to the stove.
ajax18 wrote:Educating everyone is expensive. Most of my female colleagues work 6 day weeks trying to pay back their student loan debt. I tend to think our culture of serial monogamy isn't the best environment for children either.
Keep'em barefoot, and pregnant. Why barefoot? It keeps them two inches closer to the stove.
We've had that joke here before and now I question your identity!
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
just me wrote:...(snip)...Ugh. What is happening to youth that would make them do this kind of thing?
This is highly unusual for it to be 2 females plotting this together.
for those of us on the outside of the protective bubble, by what measure are claiming as support for your "highly unusual" thesis here?
because it is not really that unusual unless you are claiming outside of the trend for the past 4 decades or so.
"In 1980, females represented 11 percent of juvenile arrests for violent offenses. By 2000, that proportion had grown to 18 percent, and by 2004 it had risen to 30 percent. Even though arrest numbers remained higher for boys than girls during that period, arrest rates for girls increased while rates for boys decreased. This increase in girls’ arrest rates caused juvenile justice specialists to question why girls were becoming more involved in delinquency."
However, it would seem reasonable to conclude that women are beginning to get what they asked for, they are becoming more like men.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
just me wrote:...(snip)...Ugh. What is happening to youth that would make them do this kind of thing?
This is highly unusual for it to be 2 females plotting this together.
for those of us on the outside of the protective bubble, by what measure are claiming as support for your "highly unusual" thesis here?
because it is not really that unusual unless you are claiming outside of the trend for the past 4 decades or so.
"In 1980, females represented 11 percent of juvenile arrests for violent offenses. By 2000, that proportion had grown to 18 percent, and by 2004 it had risen to 30 percent. Even though arrest numbers remained higher for boys than girls during that period, arrest rates for girls increased while rates for boys decreased. This increase in girls’ arrest rates caused juvenile justice specialists to question why girls were becoming more involved in delinquency."
However, it would seem reasonable to conclude that women are beginning to get what they asked for, they are becoming more like men.
That would correlate to my assertions regarding placing infants/young children in child care programs. The 1980's produced the first generation of large numbers of children raised in childcare programs.
(I don't know why I keep spelling it child care and then childcare, except for the fact that my brain is probably rotting. In fact, I'm sure of it. I'll leave my misspellings as evidence of my decline.)
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
ETA: Before anyone thinks I'm totally nuts (which is already proven fact), there were indeed government sponsored childcare programs previously in US history as well as privately owned. What I am saying is that there was a quantum leap in the number of children being raised in child care programs in the 1980's.
Thank you feminist movement.
(I'll be back to see how many hits I take on that last line.)
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
I don't agree that psychopathy can account for most, let alone all, criminal acts.