‘Very sheltered’ homeschooled Texas teen guns down both of his parents: police

[Galraedia]

Source: Raw Story

A teenager from Frisco, Texas is accused of murdering both of his parents late Monday night.

According to DallasNews.com, the 16-year-old was “very sheltered,” and was being homeschooled by parents who wished to shield him from the world.

The teenaged gunman was one of two school-age children left at home out of five. The deceased — Ryan Callans, 48, and Maria Elena Callans, 49 — had three other adult children.

Frisco Police Officer Chad LaPrelle told the Dallas Morning News that officers responded to a 911 call around 2:00 a.m. Monday reporting gunshots. Both Callens parents were dead of gunshot wounds when police reached the residence.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/12/very-sheltered-homeschooled-texas-teen-guns-down-both-of-his-parents-police/

[upaloopa]

1. Fear is why they had a gun and fear is the reason

for sheltering the kid. Fear killed them.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. I consider it to be child abuse to lock you kid up like this.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. That's exactly what I was thinking.

Sounds like the kid was a long-term prisoner in his own home. God only knows what went on there.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. Not hard to imagine at all....

[tk2kewl]

37. I'm not a fan of homeschooling but...

The kind of rules this kid lived under are pretty much the same as the ones I lived under as a teen. And it is not easy, but is not in and of itself child abuse.

That being said... catching a beating for breaking the rules or being consistently browbeaten for not measuring up is child abuse.

I experienced all of the above and did ultimately fight back. There were guns in my house but they were always in a locked cabinet and had trigger locks.

I definitely resented the strict rules, but it was how they were delivered and enforced that was really the thing that took me decades to come to terms with.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

38. I feel it's the job of parents to prepare a kid to deal with the real world....

Part of that is socializing with kids their own age.

Ever see the movie "Blast from the Past"?

[hamsterjill]

43. Totally, totally agree.

Your children will enter the world at large at some point. Whether it's at six or thirty, they will still be exposed to the world at some point. It is the job of all parents to teach their children to deal with all parts of the world, both good and bad, alike and different, etc.

The best thing a parent can do for a child is to expose that child to as much as possible in a positive way, including having access to different cultures, different thinking, different way of doing things, etc.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

45. These parents want their kids to believe God is in the sky and the Devil is under their feet....

And BOTH watch them masturbate.

[hamsterjill]

46. These parents were the extremes, of course.

Not good all the way around.

As a Christian, my faith is important to me. I respect any person's right to believe or not believe as each person feels is right for him/her. When faith is taken to the extreme, many times it is the children who suffer.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

47. People who are authoritarian think God is just like them.

[KamaAina]

3. So if he had gone to school, would we be looking at yet another school shooting?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. I doubt it. He probably would have had friends in the real world.

[mopinko]

7. prolly

maybe they were sheltering because they knew how troubled he was.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. I don't know. I know of a family that homeschooled their three children,

two girls and a boy.

After the father left the (crazy fundamentalist) mother, she started homeschooling them, only she was convinced that the boy was "full of the devil" and had to be punished. It was so bad that his sisters told people that they prayed for him to be good enough not to be punished.

Finally, the boy managed to phone his father, who came and got him.

However, the last I heard, the poor kid was having a lot of trouble because he didn't know how to act in a normal school or interact with non-fundamentalist kids, in addition to which, the homeschooling had left him behind other kids his age in most subjects.

[mopinko]

17. yeah, everyone has a horror story.

successes tend to either be invisible, or not believed.

hs vet here.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. Just giving an example of the type of kid who might snap and kill his parents

due to prolonged abuse, hidden because the kid rarely left the house.

[mopinko]

21. i think that is a specious conclusion.

quite possibly you have it exactly backwards. more likely, none of us have a clue.
i raised a kid with a brain injury. it is hard. all the choices are hard, and few of them are good.

i just try not to judge parents. the truth is rarely simple.

[Psephos]

25. well and wisely said n/t

[alfredo]

30. I woman I know said she had to "beat the devil" out of her boys because he wanted

to possess them. They both survived, but there is a darkness around them. You can see it in their eyes.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

39. There are some that believe foot odor is caused by the devil and beat their socks.

[Thor_MN]

8. Hard to say, if he had got a normal schooling

and normal social interactions, he might have been a normal kid.

If his "homeschooling" was a toxic shit sandwich of hate, that might be why he snapped.

[christx30]

15. Normal schooling and normal social interactions

didn't help Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. The parents were trying to shield their son from the bullying and crap that goes on in school.
But who knows what it was. Maybe there was other kinds of abuse going on that we just don't know about. I don't think it's going to be any one thing. It's going to be a combination of many things that pushed this kid over the edge and turned him into a killer.
But I don't think this is an indictment of homeschooling. There are over a million of other home schooled children that haven't shot up their families.

[Thor_MN]

18. Hence the word "might'...

If you read the article, brief as it was, you would know that his interactions with the outside world were very restricted by his parents. It said nothing about sheltering him from bullying. It did say that he went to a public grade school.

Homeschooling can be a great thing. It can also be horrendous. The main thing it can not be is monitored, so it is the most haphazard schooling that exists. Will every child who is homeschooled turn out like this kid? Of course not. If you homeschooled 1000 other children in the exact manner this kid was treated, would any of them kill their parents? Who knows? One thing you can say for certain is that he did not go to the public school to do his killing.

[alfredo]

31. Marilyn Manson was educated in a Christian school. He turned out OK.

[christx30]

33. If they churned out more

Marilyn Mansons, if trust them more.

[alfredo]

41. Jim Morrison went to Seminary school.

[WestSeattle2]

44. OMG - too funny

[ohnoyoudidnt]

11. Or maybe if he was given a normal life he wouldn't

have shot anyone.

[lobodons]

9. Parents got what they wanted

Looks like their kid will be shielded from the world for the rest of his life.

[secondvariety]

10. What a shame.

Sounds like his parents were a little intense.

[tabasco]

12. He was a member of the "well-regulated militia"

His parents were obviously valid militia targets

[Bragi]

20. Obviously

Militia lawyers are now being dispatched.

[Kennah]

13. Kill him! Parents clearly would have supported the death penalty in this case.

[Historic NY]

14. He raptured them.

[Hoppy]

22. Duzy of the week.

[snooper2]

40. LOL

[tblue37]

23. Sometimes people homeschool because it allows them

Last edited Tue Aug 12, 2014, 09:46 PM - Edit history (2)

to abuse their children without having to worry someone else will spot the bruises.

That might not be what was going on in this case, but one article I read said that one of his sisters would pray that he would "be good" so that his parents would not have to punish him.

On edit: Hyperactive autocorrect turned "punish" into "publish" in my last sentence!

Second edit: I confused this family's case with the one mentioned in post 16 in this thread. Still, a lot of abuse does happen in some families when children are kept from interacting with anyone outside the family.

[freshwest]

24. That says a lot... Tragic for everyone.

[passiveporcupine]

28. See post 16 above

are you sure you are talking about the same family?

[tblue37]

29. You are right--I got the two families confused! nt

[alfredo]

42. Isolation is a tool of the abuser.

[catbyte]

26. Yikes.

[SoapBox]

27. Another gun used to kill.

Tragic.

[LannyDeVaney]

32. I read a very interesting article today ...

from the New Yorker.

An aside: Google "Slate best New Yorker articles paywall" and you get a list of their best stuff that is free to read for 3 months before they put up a pay wall. I recommend the article about Scientology.

Anyhoo, another one of their absolutely amazing stories is an article on isolation in prison, an expanding out to the influence on an individual's sanity after long-term isolation. I think it is relevant to this discussion.

[Tom Ripley]

34. They shielded him from R-rated movies...

but guns were appropriate.

How did that work out?

[Jerry442]

35. People like this are statistical outliers.

It's a good goal to reduce the number of incidents like this but not a good idea to shape policy around them. It's much better to look at the far, far larger number of people whose lives have been ended or screwed up by our gun policies in ordinary ways that don't hit the national headlines and try to do something about that.

There's a saying, "hard cases make bad law." Cases involving insane berserk people probably don't make good law either.

Also: don't decide to not homeschool your kids because they might shoot you someday. Avoid homeschooling your kids because it's not good for them.

[mac56]

36. ^ THIS ^