ATLANTA — A lovesick teenage girl slammed her car into oncoming traffic in a suicide attempt as she counted down “ten, nine, eight …” in text messages to the female classmate who spurned her, authorities said. The teenager survived but a woman in the other car, a mother of three, died.Sixteen-year-old Louise Egan Brunstad faces a charge of felony murder for ramming her family’s Mercedes-Benz head-on into a smaller Daewoo driven by 30-year-old Nancy Salado-Mayo of Mexico who was killed. District Attorney Paul Howard said he likely will try Brunstad as an adult. If convicted, she faces an automatic life sentence.
How heartbreaking :( As an oh-so-old mid-twenty-something, let me say that my decision making skills were very bad as a teenager. Sadly, I still think they were “above average.” Teenagers can’t predict the consequences of their actions, and this is a great example. What a tragedy for all involved.
what is blogroll? i don’t get it 🙂
A blogroll is just a place to put your favorite blog links 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogroll
I just love your blog – plenty of food for thought (and books for my wishlist!) I’m glad you’re enjoying Jim Trealease – I was always an avid reader, but the Read Aloud Handbook really cemented my decision to take the literature rich direction for our homeschool adventure.
I had to comment on this story, though. I used to nanny for a family in the Sandy Springs area, in fact the kids I took care of attend Holy Innocents where Louise is/was a student. It’s a very affluent area, which gives this story so many layers.
My initial reaction was “here’s another brat who has always gotten her way and tried to self-destruct when she finally didn’t get what she wanted.” It’s horrible of me to make that assumption, but knowing how wealthy her parents have to be to send her to Holy Innocents (last I knew, Kindergarten was $12,000 a year) I figured that this was probably the case. Jen Ig had a great essay in the latest issue of The Old Schoolhouse about how to raise a brat: always give them what they want, never deny them anything. What we, as parents, should really be doing is raising servants, “people who value others more than they value themselves.”
But your comment made me dig deeper. I think part of the problem is also accountability. Many stories out of Atlanta (and even here in rural SC) have illustrated a new trend in parenting – a trend where children are no longer responsible for the decisions they make. My child gets caught drinking underage? It’s not HIS fault, it’s the fault of the school that knew about the party but didn’t call me. My child gets caught in a shoplifting/stealing ring – it’s not HER fault, I can explain this away. I wonder if these children have any idea that what they did was wrong? It drives me bonkers. What is the point of having moral compasses if our parents (and their lawyers) can always protect us from our own actions?
Getting away from the parenting issues involved here, lets look at the difference between the classes. Roswell Rd is a pretty congested area with plenty of traffic lights. I doubt Louise could have been going that fast when she hit Nancy’s car (it definitely wasn’t a freeway accident). None the less, Nancy’s car was totaled in such a way that ended her life, and the officers were amazed that her child survived. And Louise? In her parents’ Mercedes? She hobbled away with an ankle injury. Should safe cars only be available to the uber wealthy?
This is definitely a story I’ll keep my eye on. I can’t imagine ruining my life like this at such a young age. She’ll always carry the image of the car wreck and the knowledge of the emotional ruin she has brought to Nancy’s family on her shoulders. As parents, we should take note of what went wrong, and strive to raise our children to be more considerate of others, more responsible for their actions.
Is that possible with teenagers?
Thanks so much for reading! Your comments really made me think. I didn’t know any of the back story (although I assumed that she was wealthy because of the vehicle she was driving.)
I completely agree with what you wrote. I think that a really disturbing trend in parenting is that parents impose completely unnatural consequences as their “discipline” and then they shield the child from the natural consequences of their actions. Instead of allowing the chidlren to slowly feel more and more of the natural consequences until they are to the point where they are handling it all on their own, it works backwards. More and more unnatural consequences are added on while the parents take the natural consequences on themselves. It makes me very afraid for when those kids get out in the real world, because they will be so used to their parents protecting them from the natural consequences.
Its an excellent way to raise kids who won’t pay their own bills, live on their own, buy their own clothes/food/etc, or stand up when they did something wrong and take the consequences. Those kids who are able to break out of that cycle have to do it in spite of their upbringing, and it is a harsh reality. I saw it so many times when I was in college.