Yesterday, while I was out getting some work done on my teeth (note: root canals are less painful than I thought, except to my wallet) my buddy Newscoma wrote a post so important and powerful, it completely rocked my world.

We talk to our kids about not smoking, about brushing their teeth every day, about how to say no to drugs, and about always using a condom. But how often are we talking to our kids about domestic violence? I know I don’t talk to them nearly enough about it.

Awhile back, I posted a link to a letter a mom wrote to her boys. Part of it reads: It is your responsibility, as a man, to protect those who can not
protect themselves. If you fail at this, you have failed as a human
being. It is your duty, even when refusing to protect, or even causing
the harm yourself, has no visible consequences for you.

This is important stuff, here. It’s something we don’t talk to our children about enough. We need to tell our daughters there are men out there who certainly look and act like Prince Charming, until that first time they give us a black eye. We need to show our sons that it is never okay to hit a woman. Not only is it never okay, but it’s also never okay to stand back and watch while someone is being hurt.

I know a woman whose husband dragged her through a WalMart parking lot by her hair, screaming at her the whole time. The police were never called. Nobody stepped in to help. Much later, she gathered her courage through his threats to kill her, to take her children away, through all the battering he had done to her physically and mentally; and left him. They don’t always go back.

We need to make our children so they are impervious to domestic violence. We need to teach them to leave if they are being hurt. We need to teach them not to think they can discipline another adult physically. Maybe, just maybe, if we all taught this to our children, domestic violence would become a rarity in our society and nobody would have to grow up with it.