Community should work to keep children safe

It takes a village.

My son went to the Bulldogs’ Friday night game against Browning. On Saturday, when asked about the game, he said it was fun, but he didn’t have a good time.

As any concerned father would do I asked him “why?” He told me that while he and his friends were watching the game, something bad had happened. Now I really pressed him for details as I was out of town working myself and speaking with my son, whom I missed very much, by telephone. He told me that a younger child had been found outside the field by his friends, emotionally upset, shirt torn, alone.

The younger boy told them he was playing in the new playground on Second Street with his brand new Kindle Fire. He reported some older kids had come to the playground, roughed him up physically, had taken his brand new present and fled on bicycles. My son and his friends took the boy with them, found a school administrator and subsequently got the younger boy to his father who was close by and presumably watching the game as well.

No harm, no foul ... hardly. Aside from the emotional and physical trauma inflicted on this child, as a father I am appalled that this would happen in our community.

My family has chosen to live in Whitefish precisely because this doesn’t happen here. Or shouldn’t. I’ve lived in many communities where children are victims of bullying, theft and just plain assault and I’ve done everything I can do to try and keep from having to raise my children in one of those environments. I hope, no I pray, that Whitefish does not become one of those communities where my kids have to watch what shoes they wear to school or they might get shot for them.

I could easily see myself in the role of this child’s father, letting my kid or kids play in a playground close by while I participated in a community activity or watched a sporting event and up to this time would not even think for a second they might get beaten up over an electronic device. Alternatively, the disappointment I would feel toward my child if I found that he had brutalized a younger child would be overwhelmingly shameful. I wouldn’t know how to make this situation better beyond making sure the device was delivered back to its rightful owner by the youth that showed up with it along with the sincerest of apologies by the youth in question.

The truth is, there is no way to make this situation better or make it up to the unfortunate little guy with the Kindle. I’m fairly confident this event will rock his trust in older kids for a very long time but perhaps the efforts by my son’s friends helped to ease his emotional wounds. At this point I can only offer my opinion that as a community we need to follow up on these events as they occur and hopefully by doing so, stay out in front these abhorrent actions and keep them from becoming recurrent. It takes a village!

— John F. Lewison, Whitefish