A few weeks ago, there was a tragic mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 17 people died or were injured. It was one of the deadliest school shootings to date. This has happened too many times. And this time, the survivors wouldn’t let it go.

Students from Stoneman Douglas and kids from all over took a stand and called for something to be done. They called for gun control reform, told their stories, stood their ground, and asked that the adults in charge to do something to prevent this from happening again. They were calm, mature, and brave, and used their voices to ask lawmakers to take action and make a change so that nobody would have to go through this again.

But the adults wouldn’t listen.

It’s baffling. Adults who have it in their minds that kids, even teens in high school who are legally able to handle vehicles and have jobs, are too immature to have opinions and take a stance on politics and legal action. Lawmakers and media members heard what the kids said, listened to their pleas, and basically threw them in the garbage. Despite living through this event and having terrifying firsthand experience, adults refuse to take them seriously.

It’s heartbreaking and disgusting that adults care about their pride and their need to be right so much that they will blatantly disregard the opinions, thoughts, and feelings of the teenagers who watched their classmates murdered right in front of them.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new development. Kids seldom have their voices seriously listened to. And why? Simply because they are children. Admittedly, some young kids have some silly thoughts, but there’s a difference between “I think we should have ice cream for dinner” and “This is a problem, and we need to stop it.”

Just looking around me, I’m amazed at how frequently it happens. Many parents have a total disregard for what their kids want. The number of kids forced into activities they don’t want to do because their parents declare it’s what they need to do is astounding. Kids’ entire lives, regardless of what they want, can be totally dictated by their parents. In some households, having an opinion is out of the question.

Parents, start listening to your kids and what they feel and want. If they’re sad or uncomfortable, take the time to listen to why, and perhaps do something to change it. This applies to all kids, whether they’re six or sixteen. Their thoughts and feelings are valid and shouldn’t be swept under the rug just because they’re kids.

If you keep on ignoring what kids, you’re going to look like the buffoonish adults in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Those adults may look stupid, but it’s not that they’re stupid - it’s that they refuse to listen to the kids, who have identified the problem and want something to be done about it. But because they refuse to listen to the kids, they become victim to this easily solvable issue.

Start listening to kids and what they have to say. They are people, just as much as adults are. They live in the same world as adults, and they are affected by the same problems. Only difference is, they’re willing to do something to change it, while adults are stuck in their own ignorant little bubbles.