Our Children Are Trying To Tell Us Something

And we're not listening. So they wage guerrilla war. Shooting at each other and at us. In schools. On freeways. Copying our violence. And it still doesn't get our attention. We don't see ourselves in the mirror they hold up.

The recent Iranian movie, set on the Iraqi/Kurdistan border, Turtles Can Fly is peopled by children who are the living debris of war. Without arms, legs, eyes they make their way among the wrecked tanks, digging for land mines the way the famished Irish looked for potatoes in the dead soil. Nothing grows here except tragedy. And it grows and grows. A girl forced to mother a blind child forced on her by a soldier's rape, finally just gives up. Her armless brother a symbol forced to watch her fly off a barren cliff. And around them the adults fight for a glimpse of the satellite TV set up by the one whole teenager in the village.

Under our noses the children reach for guns and shoot, crying into cyberspace of their loneliness and fear. And we feed them on empty patriotism and "mine is better than yours" religion and ignore their questions.

George Lakoff talks of the "strict father" the Republicans lionize. An old image from the days of our Calvinist beginnings. No place for compassion. Our destinies are predetermined. A helping hand will only hurt. A distorted philosophy that will kill our culture as it maims and destroys our children.

It is time for a different kind of parenting. It is time to look at the truth and to apologize. To validate the kids. To include them in the conversation. To be responsible and compassionate. It's going to take a lot to turn around several generations of looking away. But we need to look at what we've done. This is the digital age and yet we've been spared the photos and stories of the children killed and wounded in Iraq and elsewhere. And the physical violence is just a clue to the depth of the destruction.