As I read about the insanely close Supreme Court vote regarding the state-sanctioned murder of children, a scene from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows came to mind. In this scene the character “Rat” had, for the millionth time, corrected “Toad’s” grammar as he was ranting about their upcoming attack to take back his house that had been stolen by the weasels. “I’LL LEARN ‘EM,” Toad bellowed, “I’ll learn ‘em!” Rat sighed, “That’s teach them, Toad, TEACH them.” Badger had had enough of Rat’s restraint. “The time’s past for TEACHING them, Rat,” he growled, “Now we’re going to LEARN ‘em.” Badger knew exactly what he and Toad wanted.

“What do you want?” I asked the angry dad at one of my seminars. He was furious with me for arguing that hitting disrespectful kids is, at best, a waste of parenting time, and at worst, an exercise in using gasoline to put out fires. He had just finished a very emotional, very effective tirade in front of a large group of other parents of adolescents. These scared, frustrated folks were on their feet, cheering as this man boomed, “WHAT I WANT is to give these punks a lesson they’ll never forget. To let them know that they can’t talk to us parents like that and get away with it! They better goddamn respect us, or else.” As the applause died down, I put my quiet question to the whole audience. “What do we want with our kids? Do we want to hurt them for being hurtful, or help them to be better people? Do we want to ‘learn ‘em,’ or ‘teach them’?”

Disrespectful teens and murderous adolescents are certainly not the same “kettle of fish” (as Rat would say) and yet they are the two end points on a continuum of child dysfunction. Think what you may about adult capital punishment, the key concepts in this debate are child versus adult and punishment versus teaching. Research long ago obliterated any notions that putting kids to death serves as a dissuading factor in a teen’s decision to kill. By neurological definition, adolescents are temporarily “crazy” (my provocative phrase) with unfinished brains that lack many of the crucial components and capabilities of adults. But a thing far crazier than our kids is our own schizophrenic, adult view that allows us to see teens as children when they smoke, drink, or have sex, but as adults when they kill. Exactly when did murder become the ultimate test of competency?

Of course, the real energy driving this insane debate is our hidden, ugly love of revenge. Perhaps the greatest misquoting of The Bible is “An eye for an eye…” but it lives on forever since it fits so neatly with our insatiable animal rage, something we like to sanitize with the word “justice.”

Grahame’s 100-year-old words punctured the giddy balloon of vengeance that had temporarily lifted that audience of tired, angry parents. As the complexity of our reactions to arrogant teenagers settled in, the mood fell. “Teaching them”, I observed, “sure feels less sexy than “learning ‘em” doesn’t it?” Not many in that auditorium of slowly nodding heads felt energized once they understood the difference between the right way and the wrong way...the Irish-Catholic, ex-military part of me among them. But it remains the right way nevertheless. We owe our children “teaching,” not “learning.” And this we owe them the most just when we feel like loving them the least.