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Fretful Mother: explaining the Chris Brown and Rihanna story
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Rihanna, before and after the beating. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles and TMZ)
It’s inevitable. The television is on, the paper is open, or the latest news popped up on the Internet. There, in all of its glory, is the Chris Brown beating of Rihanna story just waiting to plague your family with its details.
I have a toddler. He isn’t even close to the age of speaking and understanding this mess. But, I wonder what I would tell him about Chris Brown. Is there a playground analogy to draw here? Certainly, “don’t hit your friends” can be applied.
We teach our kids about avoiding strangers, checking candy during Halloween, and brushing their teeth. When do we teach them that beating up girlfriends is a very bad thing?
Chris Brown apparently had an abuser as a role-model in the form of a stepfather. He would defend his mother and hate his stepfather, but now those demons come back in the form of repeating the past, in a very public and sensationalized way.
Even more disturbing to me are the reports that Rihanna wants him back. So many women go back to their abusers, for various reasons. She’s only 21 and has already fallen into this pattern. When do we teach our daughters to stand up for themselves and leave the jerks behind? At some point, we need to step back and realize that loving the bad boy is not always the best choice.
Escalating violence, she told police. He was becoming increasingly violent over time. It’s clear from the police report that Brown intended to inflict harm and had done so in the past. So, it was okay in her eyes to take a certain amount of abuse from this young man. Where did Rihanna learn this? It’s a shame that celebrity and fame can’t erase learned patterns, rather it seems to enhance them instead.
He’s allowed to see her. They’ve reportedly reunited.
I worry that even if violence isn’t a part of the normal non-celebrity family, how do you teach kids that this behavior is horrendous and not to be admired in their musician or actor role models?
So, give me some hope here. If you’ve known abuse in your life, how do you positively influence your sons and daughters to be the ones to rise above it?
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