It's a big bad world out there...

Instilling morals in my children is one of the most important things I can do as a mother. I teach them to treat others as they would like to be treated themselves, respect life, respect others, and live their lives as peaceful, reasonable, rational human beings.

I don’t allow them to watch violent movies or play violent video games. I teach them that violence, never, ever achieved anything except pain and heartache and a legacy of more violence. I do stop just short of having ‘Kumbaya’ themed evenings of song or sticking flowers in their hair, but I want my sons to grow up to be well-adjusted men.
Being a bit of pacifist, I remember having a big problem with them playing with toy guns. I remember the first time someone gave my oldest son one as a birthday present.
I smiled in an over-the-top way, shouted ‘thank you’ all the while trying to control an involuntary twitch in my eye. I hid the thing behind the fridge. But my boys seem drawn to them like moths to flame, alongside cars, trucks, wrestling, loud bodily function noises and stuff getting blown up on TV. They are just boys, and for as long as I’ll live I’ll probably never understand how their minds work.

I’ll try and keep them on the right track. However I cannot police what they see and what they hear 24 hours per day. The power of my preaching/nagging/teachings will be diluted by the outside world, by the television, by what they see on the streets.

This week it was difficult to escape the images of Colonel Gaddafi’s bloody death. The horrific pictures of him wounded, his life blood seeping onto the dusty streets of Sirte, were projected into our living rooms all day whether we liked it or not. Special news reports interrupted programmes, they were on almost every channel, they were on every front page in the shops, on the Internet. I was furious that my children were subjected to these disturbing pictures before I dug the remote control out from the depths of the sofa cushions. I switched the TV off and we watched DVDs for the rest of the day.

But there were questions. Why are they attacking that old man? Why did they shoot him in the head? Is this a film? Why are they standing over his dead body cheering? Why is someone filming him dying and not helping him? Why are those people watching his son bleed to death and not doing something?

Yes he was a bad man. I know he was a cruel and heartless man himself and caused many deaths of innocents. I’m sure the world will be a better place without him but regardless of that, the way he was dragged around the streets, shot and killed was shameful, shocking. It makes those who carried out the attack just as bad as him, just as brutal. The scenes played out that day did nothing more than teach young, impressionable minds that it’s perfectly acceptable to let anger and hatred take over your heart and your head. That it’s OK to treat a fellow human in a horrifically brutal way. To glorify and celebrate pain and death, as long as you think it’s justified.
Any prisoner of war who is injured and not resisting – which was clearly the case from the pictures – has the right not only to human treatment, but medical care. Not only the people who lynched him, when he was already severely injured should be ashamed, but elements of the media who normalised this behaviour by printing the pictures of his attack and showing the videos for our children to see in the afternoon are also at fault.
I fear for my children, for the world they are growing up in. A world were war, brutality and cruelty to fellow human beings is normal, celebrated, glorified. They will learn that live isn’t fair sometimes.
I look at them now, their innocence and light almost blinding. But beyond our front door, there’s a big bad world. They will have to grow tough skins to survive. As do we all.