I have never been a parent. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate how hard it is to be one. Nobody gets an instruction manual, you have to go by trial and error and hope that somehow, you’ll raise a kid who knows how to navigate through life.

I know some parents who make it look ridiculously easy. That’s the thing tho’, it *isn’t* actually easy, they just have that skill of making it appear so, but it’s partly the fault of our perception as much as it is their annoying brilliance. 🙂 I also know of people who could not give a shit or were blissfully awful at it. That their kids turn out to be as well adjusted as they are is a testament to the strength of those kids more than anything. Sometimes, however, the lack of parental guidance leads to less great outcomes.

Here’s what puzzles me. When your child, to a great extent due to your abject lack of parental intervention, tuition and guidance, turns out to be what many would consider our worst nightmare, your first reaction is to blame anything but that key element.

These two stories illustrate what I mean. Why is it the responsibility, at a point when the damage has been done, of the UK border agency (who god knows have their share of justified criticisms) to take control of your radicalised child? I can’t mourn for that young man when I imagine what he could conceivably have done to others, but I feel very sad that his parents let him down. If they had done everything that they could then my view would be different, but clearly they didn’t. They were just glad he wasn’t getting into trouble anymore…

As for the US story, what *is* going on in America? I should start a tag for amazingly crackers / scary shit that the US does… I don’t know that this blog is big enough to contain it all…