In recent weeks Macedonia has run into two parallel stories of peer violence that have grown from isolated incidents into a pattern. In Štip, video footage shows a girl beaten by several other children, dragged by the hair and hit while she lies helpless on the ground. In Đorče Petrov, four minors (one 17-year-old, three 14-year-olds) have been charged with a violent attack on a 13-year-old girl. Cases are stacking up across several cities - but how are we, as a society, reacting?

In the Štip case the court issued "intensified parental supervision" instead of the harder measures the prosecution had asked for. Lawyer Maja Ristova publicly criticized the leniency: the ruling, she said, was "inadequate and worrying" and sends the wrong message about how seriously peer violence among minors is taken. The case is on appeal.

In the Skopje case, the Public Prosecutor's Office filed six criminal charges against the parents of the minors for neglecting their duty of care and upbringing. That is a wider intervention than what we saw in Štip - and perhaps a sign that the prosecutor is already learning that punishing children without pulling parents into the picture is a symbolic fix at best.

Social media is split, but the majority is asking for tougher action. There are repeated calls for joint psychological and psychiatric treatment for parents and children, plus financial fines. One opinion came up again and again: "Parents and children should get psychological and psychiatric help, and parents should pay financial penalties."

The question that stays unanswered: where did we, the adults, fall behind? When one child hits another with fists and slaps, that is not random - it is the symptom of a world whose values are wired differently. Schools have no psychology offices. Social-work centres are overrun. Conversations about empathy at home are all we have left, and they are not enough. Macedonian society never decided what it wants from its children, and now it is surprised when they answer with their fists.

What gets done tomorrow? Nothing new. Same system. Same cycle. Maybe, with serious enough penalties to make parents realize they can also end up in front of a judge, something will move. But we are waiting for the next clip. And we know there will be a next one.