Posts filed under ‘looking the other way’
Boys Will Be Boys…
I could never understand why the things that I got into trouble for, my brother didn’t get into trouble for. The way it was explained to me was: “you are not your brother”. Fast forward to a story that my husband used to tell me. He was the oldest of four, and two of those siblings were girls. His sisters did not understand why the discipline for him was different than the discipline for them. His dad simply told them “you are not a 16-year-old boy”. Now whether that’s right or wrong, that’s how our culture decides what’s appropriate for boys versus what’s appropriate for girls. It doesn’t always match up with what is right.
What’s even more unbalanced is how our society is inconsistent in its justice for black boys versus white boys. I taught males in high school. When I taught at a male-only high school, and noticed that the punishment for African-American or Hispanic students tended to be more severe than the punishment for Caucasian students. What was that about?
So growing up as a girl, I realized that boys’ behavior was more acceptable than girls, and as a young adult woman I found that white males received more leniency for punishment than males of color.
So now we have a U.S. Supreme Court candidate who has been accused of sexual harassment as a teenage boy. During one of the news reports yesterday, I heard a commentator or maybe it was a U.S. senator say “well you know boys will be boys.” That’s a travesty and shouldn’t be tolerated! A crime is a crime no matter who does it. If you sell dope, (I think we call them drugs today) then you’re guilty. Your punishment shouldn’t be any different because of your skin color or your gender. If Bill Cosby, who had a reputation of being America’s funniest TV dad, can be accused and convicted of sexual misconduct, then so can Judge Kavanaugh and President Trump.
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C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Family Dynamics Strategist, Author & Speaker
Relationship Between Bullying and Mass Shooters
Could it be the Bullying? 
Each time I hear about a shooting especially a school shooting, I have two thoughts. First I wonder if the shooter was bullied while he was growing up. Second, I wonder what kind of home environment the shooter grew up in. No I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist or FBI profiler, just a parenting expert who has studied lots of family units where children are raised. Sometimes the home environments are safe and nurturing. Other times, the environments are toxic and kids are not supported or cared for.
Bullying has no socioeconomic confines. Kids from all walks of life are bullied. I was bullied and I remember my mother trying lots of things to help me stand up for myself, including spanking me. Crazy right? When I taught at a boys high school, many teachers and coaches felt (like my mom) that the ‘bullied’ kid needed to learn how to fight, stand up for himself, grow up and be a man, man up and other nonsensical things that build
hate, embarrassment, and the need for retribution. In our gun-crazed society, if you can’t protect yourself, go buy a gun and annihilate your enemies. Have you noticed – all of the shooters have been male. Could that be because boys are taught to be competitive and aggressive?
But none of this is cool! There have been 18 school shootings in 2018, and this is only February. We have to develop more humane ways to teach our children how to ‘stand up for themselves’, handle bullies and be resilient when things don’t go their way.
Bullying is a learned behavior. Perhaps as parents, we need to find more humane ways to handle our anger and disappointments and set an example that our children can follow. They are always watching us.
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C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Family Dynamics Strategist, Author & Speaker
Is Bill Cosby Our Sacred Cow?
reprinted from Black Woman Unleashed magazine 1/19/2015
When I was growing up, my mother said “Stay away from strangers.” What she didn’t tell me was to also be careful of people I knew. I know she was right about strangers because on a bus ride home one evening while in high school, a man exposed himself to me. I was horrified and told the bus driver. Why would someone do that? Mom could only say “He was sick.”
When my daughter started growing up, my words to her were “Don’t get into the car with anybody except me, your dad or your grandmother”. We kept her list very short. You could count the people on one hand.
Which brings me to the Bill Cosby controversy. Last year when I began hearing the reports that Dr. Cosby was accused of sexually assaulting multiple woman (more than 20 years ago), I decided he had either stopped paying off his blackmailer or someone was out to malign the gentle, friendly Dr. Huxtable. Who would want to do that to lovable Bill Cosby?
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Mentor
Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens 
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