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 fiancé 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.
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