KEY POINTS:
My idea of a relaxing Sunday was interrupted by a panic call from an aunt of an international student.
"I found a gun in his room," she said. She had gone into the 14-year-old's room and found a pistol and immediately thought of the Virginia Tech shooting.
I'll
call him James because the aunt agreed to let me write about this only if I did not identify him or the high school he attends.
The real-looking pistol turned out to be a G26 air-gun. It had a clear warning on the box that the gun was restricted to adults 18 years and older.
The second shock came when she asked James how he got the gun. "A classmate's father bought it for me using his Trade Me account," he said. "I needed an adult to help me buy the gun, so I asked him."
Many of his schoolmates had adult contacts or parents who helped them get R18 stuff, like party pills, computer games and DVDs, he said.
His angry aunt phoned the classmate's father, but his view was that it was okay for kids to be playing with air guns. He felt it wasn't dangerous.
Last January, an air gun accident left a 13-year-old with a pellet lodged in his brain, and last month, a 6-year-old girl nearly died when her brother accidentally fired an air-gun at her.
In desperation, James' mum phoned me from overseas and asked me to report the matter to the school. For bringing the gun to school, James and his classmate were suspended for five days. The principal also said the classmate's father would be reported to the police.
A few days later, a friend told me he thought I had overreacted. "This is New Zealand, not Singapore," he reminded me. "The world is different now and greater exposure to things happening in the world has changed our youth."
He was okay letting his 15-year-old son take party pills and have a beer once in a while. He argued that they needed to behave like Kiwi kids to make friends.
We discussed the survey by Waikato University, which found that making New Zealand friends was one of the hardest things for Chinese students.
The study found that inability to make friends often resulted in a life of isolation and loneliness for many, and my friend argued that we should not make it any harder for our kids.
He thinks immigrant parents must learn to adapt to the changes and relax when they draw the line on what their kids can or cannot do. Where to draw the line is an issue that is confusing for most immigrant Asian parents and guardians.
James' aunt, a school teacher before she moved to New Zealand, was often torn between wanting to raise James as she would in Asia and letting him go because this was a completely different society.
Immigrant teens often use the argument that "my Kiwi friends are doing it so you have got to let me do it also", and parents are sometimes thrown off their judgment because they want their kids to adapt and be happy.
Parenting in a Western society can be different where discipline, punishment and love are seen as mutually exclusive.
The concept that they can be intertwined, where a parent punishes and disciplines a child because of love, is not widely accepted here, as debate on the anti-smacking bill has shown.
Perhaps I see things differently, as I was a terrible teen who went astray and had to be hauled forcefully back on the right course. I hated what my parents did but I realise now I have to thank them for it.
The argument that true parental love is giving our teens everything they want, even to close an eye when they break the law, does not cut any ice with me.
I believe in tough love, and supported fully James' mother's view when she asked me to report him to the school and let him face the consequences.
* In my column last week, I said most of the emails to me were even more vile and venomous than the ones sent to the editor. Over the week, I received the largest number of positive emails in my inbox since I started writing this column. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to the Herald readers who wrote to me, all 86 of them.
