Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Close to Home


In 2002, the year I graduated from high school, over 30,000 desperate people in the United States died by their own hand, leaving behind a legacy of broken dreams, sorrow and feelings of complete hopelessness. Ten years later the rate of suicide in the United States increased to over 36,000. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among teens in the United States, falling behind automobile accidents and homicide. 

Right now you’re probably wondering why I am going on about this subject tonight, and the honest truth is because it worries me. This morning my fiancĂ© and I received a call from our son’s school telling us that he had stabbed himself with his pencil. As far as he was concerned he was trying to kill himself.

Since we lost our home several weeks ago things have been a bit hectic to say the least.  We are holding ourselves together, but our son’s middle school, more specifically one of the counselors seem to think they need to make a 12 year old child’s life hell. On Friday this woman pulled him into her office to grill him on what was going on with us, making him very uncomfortable. He came home almost in tears; clearly he was extremely upset because of her actions.  When I confronted her on the phone about it today I was told “Well you weren’t here you don’t know.” 

How unprofessional is that? 

Seriously?! 

I’ve had better responses from my eight year old son. This woman is supposed to be the school counselor and she badgers and picks on children. Needless to say, we’ve pulled our son out of this school and we are seeking help for him.

My point is this though, when we send our children to school, should we really trust those people that are supposed to protect and care for them when we cannot? 

There has been a huge movement for LBGTQ teens called “It Gets Better” but what about the children and the teens of LBGTQ adults? They are bullied and tormented almost the same as the children that are LBGTQ themselves.

What messages are our schools sending when they refuse to stop the bullying to the point where children want to harm themselves?

What messages are parents sending when they don’t talk to their children about bullying other children?

Unless we act now and stop this, we will never have a healthy connected society. 
We will always be finding things to separate us, to break our unity. 

No comments:

Post a Comment