Jeanne and Tom Abbott monitored their daughter's TV exposure with care. They made especially sure that seven-year old Sally didn't see the evening news. To teachers and neighbors they explained: "There's just too much violence on TV. We feel that Sally should have a real childhood. It'll be soon enough that she'll have to face and try to understand the awful things people can do to each other."

     So the thoughtful parents waited until the child was in bed to watch the evening news. After the school-hostage taking in Russia they were relieved that their daughter had not seen those frightening scenes. But they hadn't counted on what would happen when Sally visited her friend Emma that following afternoon. The TV was on in Emma's house blaring out the news of the aftermath of the storming of the school. The pictures were graphic including the bloody corpses of children being carried out of the still burning school. When Sally came home her only response to "Did you have a good time at Emma's" was a nod. Not until that night and her noisy nightmares did Jeanne and Tom disentangle what had actually happened on that visit to Emma's house.

     They were furious. As Jeanne told me later, "How could Emma's parents be so irresponsible as to expose seven-year olds to such violent scenes? Don't they realize that the advantage of living in this country is that our children need not be exposed to such horrific events? That we can give our children a real childhood."

     But even in their fury the Abbotts didn't lash out at Emma's parents, although they were in a mood to do so. Instead they tried to think things through. Besides, in their small town it would be difficult to forbid their daughter to visit Emma.

     More important: how could they reassure Sally, explain to her, comfort her about the horror she had seen on TV? There was no denying the reality of the horror. So how do you explain it? What do you do after your child has seen such scenes on TV, scenes that she knows show what really, truly happened to other children, to their parents, to their teachers? This was not made-up stuff like in a horror movie or a video game.

     These were the questions that Jeanne Abbott asked me the day after Sally's visit to Emma's house. I answered with a question of my own: "How much have you already discussed with Sally about the bad things people do to each other. The ugliness in all of us?"

     "I guess they talk about that sort of thing in Sunday school. We try to keep the dark side of life out of our home."

What came into my mind as Jeanne said this was not some professional dicta, which both of us expected me to produce, but instead memories from my own childhood. I could feel my mother's warm arms around me giving me a soft hug as she said, "We don't do things like that. You hurt her when you hit her and then you said some mean things. We don't do things like that."

     I was about three when this scene took place. It must have been an important event to be remembered after all those years. And according to memory that scene was the first of many similar ones. These as I grew older grew in elaboration, which went something like this: "Mean feelings are ugly. You have to cast them out of your soul. When they reappear, you must insist that they go away. Mean feelings and hate will make you into an ugly, into a bad person."

     Nor were my justifications for acting-out anger or meanness accepted. By the time I was seven (Sally's age) my mother's reasoning became more philosophical. "There can be no excuses for acting ugly, because that way you become a bad person. And it doesn't make sense to let anger eat at your insides. Nor may you let hate sneak up on you. We have to become masters of ourselves, of our ugly feelings." At the same time my mother admitted that " Yes, I have failed many times. But that's why I've got to keep working on taking the anger, taking the rage, out of my soul."

     Note how very different this is from the concept of justified anger, of justified rage that allows us to let lose on those who have triggered our anger. However, there was no implication that injustices, that terrible atrocities, should not be fought. To the contrary. My mother explained: "Injustices must be fought, but not by doing the very things you are trying to put an end to." Here was an injunction against what the injustices and the horrors of life, big and little, may not do to you – or have you do. Above all it was an injunction against allowing ourselves to get out of control and do mean or dreadful things to others.

     As these memories kept flooding back I realized why they had been triggered by Jeanne's questions. These memories were giving me the answers that would help Sally. What I said to Jeanne went something like this: "Tell Sally that you would have preferred to wait before talking with her about the darkness, the mean spirit that lurks in all of us. But that you know she's already mature enough to begin to understand and deal with this aspect of being people. Tell her that many of our religions warn us against hate in our soul and the acting out of that hatred. But also admit that you too have felt the desire to hurt, have felt the desire for revenge. And what made those television scenes of the Russian school bombings all the more terrifying is that the darkness they represent is in all of us. But when you battle the darkness in your own heart you create the big hope. And that big hope is the knowledge that if you can win over the darkness in your own heart then so can the rest of the world."

     Jeanne continued to be bothered by something. Finally she found the words. "Those suicide bombers, they did have a reason. They may not have the right to take innocent lives, but they did have a cause."

     "Don't we always have a cause. Don't we always have a reason to lash out, even to destroy? Haven't we all felt the satisfaction that comes with what we sometimes call 'letting lose'. But in our heart of hearts don't we know that the justifications serve as an excuse for the dark pleasure that we humans get out of vengeance, out of destroying? And isn't this what most of our religions warn us against – the pleasure of destructiveness. Even the myth of Satan shows him with an exuberant face. He is enjoying the pleasures of doing damage, of hurting people. Leading us into destructiveness makes him the 'winner'. The curious thing is that our religions and myths have understood what we are only now discovering in our scientific exploration of the human brain. Functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI's) show that the same brain regions light up in response to cocaine as do for acts of vengeance. There is a turn-on aspect to the dark side of our nature, which our myths and religions have recognized and have tried to warn us against."

     Several days later Jeanne called again. There was awe in her voice. "I talked to Sally. That child is amazing. She immediately understood the idea that by getting the darkness out of our soul we create the big hope. She really cottoned on to the idea that if she can get rid of the satisfaction in hurting others, for whatever reason or cause, then the rest of the world's people can also. I never thought my sweet little girl hurt anyone; and certainly not that she got a kick out of it. But Sally in her honesty said she had."

     "However, what really surprised me was that she immediately understood that there mustn't be any justifications for hurting others. That justifications are merely excuses. Sally understood what I myself kept denying. I kept trying to explain the school bombings by saying to myself 'the people who perpetrated that horror had been maltreated. They were so desperate that they couldn't think of any other response than to tie bombs around themselves and blow up other people's children'. I have always thought that perhaps by being understanding we can prevent this sort of thing. I just couldn't face or believe that I was covering up for my own need, or worse yet, for the pleasure I myself got out of revenge, out of being destructive. But Sally, my sweet little seven-year-old angel understood. She understood that the reason we excuse or find justifications for cruelty is to cover up for the kicks we ourselves get out of doing mean, even terrible things. She hadn't believed for one moment that the people who did the school bombings did it for any other reason than that they got a kick out of it. How can a dear child like my Sally know and understand so much more than an adult? No wonder she had nightmares."

     My response to Jeanne was the observation "As children we haven't yet become expert in the art of denial and self deception. It allows us to be more honest with ourselves. It also means that childhood is the best time in life to learn some fundamentals about the responsibility of being a human." Wasn't that the reason my own mother began so early to emphasize that there may not, must not be any excuse or justification for hurting others?

     Perhaps my mother's teachings were the reason why as an adolescent I refused to accept the justifications for my classmate Lynne's delinquent behavior. The staff at our school went out of their way to be understanding about Lynne's skipping school to go to the movies and hanging out with delinquent boys. They, and fellow classmate Tricia and her parents excused Lynne's acting out behavior with, "the poor dear had an adoptive mother who didn't understand her. And then being reunited with her birth mother, who had once rejected her and only took her back after having remarried, that's cause enough for Lynne's problems."

     That explanation struck me as completely unacceptable especially after the occasion when the two of us were alone together and she told me why her adoptive parents had sent her to boarding school. "My adoptive mother was terrified I would kill her." Sure that the answer would be negative and an example of how crazy the adoptive mother must have been I asked: "Would you have killed her?" The chilling answer was a simple "Yes." Then, "That's why they sent me to boarding school."

     Lynne further described how after being kicked out of boarding school the adoptive parents had searched out her birth mother to see if she could help and give Lynne a successful home. The adoptive parents continued to pay for both the private school and Lynne's living expenses and promised to pay for college. I was even more appalled when I found out that Tricia and her understanding parents and the school authorities knew about Lynne's threat to murder her adoptive mother.

     And now comes the unexpected and instructive part of the story. My cold stare in response to Lynne telling me her story wasn't met with hostility or resentment. To the contrary. When we were again alone together and I showed her how to organize her studying for the next day's test she carefully followed the instructions. The result: for the first time in her life Lynne received an A on an exam. It made her so happy.

     But Lynne and I didn't get another chance to be alone together. She continued to be surrounded by well meaning people whose effect through their affect was to encourage her acting out behavior. As a result, at our high school's graduating ceremony she received a conditional diploma that precluded acceptance at even a two-year college. Eventually many years later she managed to become a telephone operator. And later still Lynne finally understood how badly she had messed up on the opportunities life had offered her. She died shortly thereafter from acute emphysema brought on by excessive smoking since her early teens. I will always mourn the Lynne that could have been.

     Was Lynne suspicious that the well-meaning adults and her friend Tricia got a kick out of her acting out behavior - that her sexual exploits with local delinquents was something they would have loved to do themselves but had never dared to do? I cannot let go of the sick feeling that that was indeed her suspicion. And did her birth mother have a similar suspicion, which was why she was so angry at the all-so-understanding school authorities and Tricia's parents? Was that also the reason why Lynne responded so positively to my cold stare?

     That cold unsympathetic stare I gave Lynne has had a similar effect on numerous juvenile delinquents that I've worked with since. Just as with Lynne I would follow the cold stare with straightforward and interesting, even humorous instructions about how to learn something, or even what was the protocol for appropriate restaurant behavior. The teachers who have observed my cold stare are invariably shocked. They expect "experts" to be understanding, even forgiving. Had they not been taught that "we must be understanding"? To their astonishment my cold stare has always produced positive results. As one surprised teacher put it: "You asked for our bad students – the ones who are always in trouble. Yet the way they've been behaving with you is like they were our model students." Those youngsters were Lynne all over again. Does that mean that this is one of the routes to help us take the darkness out of our hearts?

     Jeanne Abbott's latest call was exuberant. "I have to tell you something really beautiful. My little angel Sally keeps talking about the big hope. It has come to mean so much to her that she's instructing her classmates about how to go about creating the big hope – how to take the darkness out of our hearts. Our little angel is actually making something good come out of those monstrous school bombings."