My question for you is : Do you have children of your own, or have experience with working around children of the age to be in the 2nd to 4th grades? I doubt it, because your reply flies in the face of contemporary children’s psychology in the West!
How on earth do you go from the premise that I don’t agree with some “child psychology expert” you presume to be the gold standard for the West to the conclusion that I must not have children?
Really?
Not only do I have children of my own, but a friend of mine found out that another student at her child’s school had made a death threat against her child and another child. The threat was taken very seriously by the school, but it wasn’t taken as evidence that the child learned that kind of thing from adults, let alone his parents. As it turned out, the problem wasn’t that the boy’s parents used hate speech that applied to her child or anyone else. The problem was that the boy was disturbed, including a poor ability to relate normally with other kids and to deal with frustration. He needed help, but not the kind you’re implying.
Let us also remind ourselves of this from the Catechism:
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2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:
Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.279*
Is it possible that the boy heard this from his parents or other adults? Of course it is. Do I think it most likely? No, I don’t. If it were the most likely, could I, knowing that a more favorable interpretation is entirely possible, conclude that the worst expectation about the parents is the truth because it is the most likely? No, I cannot. The necessity to avoid rash judgment requires me to remember both the more likely explanation and the more favorable one, and not to jump to any conclusions.
As it is, unless the OP lives in the Sudan or another area in which it is too sadly common to run across an adult who does think like that, it is unlikely that a child making such a shocking statement heard it first from an adult. There are other explanations that are at least as likely, if not more so. Perhaps, for instance, we have a 3rd grade boy trying to show his displeasure by saying the most shocking thing he can think of to say. That also wouldn’t be a first, in the West or anywhere else! Third graders have been known to be thoughtless about how they shoot their mouths off.
Besides, which would be worse: for the principal talking to the parents of the child who used hate speech to start from the presumption that a child who says that is not likely to have heard it from the parents, or that it is likely that he did? I think it better to use the premise a) decent adults do not talk like that, b) the parents are decent people, and therefore c) the child could not have heard anything like that from the parents, and go from there. If the parents hold the incompatible views that people can say things like that and still keep a reputation as being decent, it will come out soon enough in the interview.
