May 5, 1999

By Elizabeth Cohen
Staff Writer

It could have been a certain facial expression, it could have been a subtle body language cue or simply a new brand of heavy silence her daughter wore, like a dark coat. One thing was clear, something was different last fall about Amy Johnson, a normally cheery 15-year-old.
Mary Johnson, her mother, says: "I could just tell."

She was right. After she sat down with her daughter and talked about her fears that something serious was bothering the Newark Valley high school sophomore, she learned that for some time Amy had been harassed on the school bus. "She didn't want to bother me or anyone by talking about it," says Johnson, who reported the behavior to the school assistant principal who had the offending children removed from the bus.

That instinct - that something was wrong with her child - cannot be taught, bought, begged, borrowed, checked out of the library or stolen. It is earned over a lifetime.

"Be tuned in to your kids," advises Bill O'Donnell, a guidance counselor at Windsor High School. "You don't have to know everything your kid is doing, but these parents had to turn away from a lot of signs," he says of the parents of the Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two boys in Littleton, Colo., who went on a bloody rampage in their high school on Tuesday.

Local parents, like people around the country, are struggling to make sense of the horrific violence and murder perpetrated by the two teen-agers on their peers at school. They say they cannot fathom it. Yet all agree that it would take a lot of looking the other way to not notice the signs that one's child was building pipe bombs, sawing off shotguns and planning such a murderous siege.

Being tuned into your children's world is so important that Johnson, a single mom, even says she would feel no qualms about snooping through her daughter's belongings if she suspected something were wrong. "I respect her privacy and would hold off as long as possible, but if something seemed out of sync I would definitely go through pockets, backpacks and read her notes to school friends," she admits.

But sometimes even the best intentions aren't enough, experts say. It is easy to place blame on the parents of the children who it is said collected Nazi memorabilia, spoke in a secret German patois and chose the birthday of a mass murderer, Adolf Hitler, to commit mass murder themselves. "We just don't know anything yet about these parents, who they were, what their situation was," points out John Weaver, a father of two sons, one of whom attends Binghamton High School.

The "Trenchcoat Mafia," as the Colorado boys reportedly dubbed themselves, "felt allegedly isolated," Weaver notes. "That could happen any place, any time and in any public facility."

That is why it is important to make sure "the individual is linked up with the community, some church, sports, dancing, other activities," suggests Weaver, who serves on the Binghamton Board of Education.

Weaver and other local parents say they think keeping the lines of communication open is one of the most important ingredients in healthy parenting. "Listen to your children, know their patterns, the job of being a parent is a full-time one, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," he says.

"It sounds cliche," says Susan Webber, the mother of two teen-age girls who attend a parochial school in Newark Valley, "but a lot of this has to do with family values." Webber says her family eats dinner together every night and talks, spends time together on vacations and that a lot of the family activities revolve around the girls' interests.

Many parents, she worries, are too wrapped up in themselves, "meanwhile we live in a society that is teaching kids there is no value in life, and no consequences for wrongdoing."

That message, she says, comes from television, movies, music, peers and from parents who check out on their kids instead of tuning in, during difficult adolescent years.

The buck, O'Donnell says, stops with the parents. "Parents have legal responsibility, parents are ultimately responsible. They are in charge of their kids."

Johnson, a single mom, says the key is to be observant and stay in touch: "I can tell you if my daughter's personality was changing, if she was suddenly becoming a Marilyn Manson follower or a skin head, I would notice. This is the child I get up with in the morning and send off to school every day. I see her get dressed, I see her friends. I interfere."

All content ©1999 The Binghamton Press Co.

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