Teenage Suicide

This morning an article caught my eye in the NYTimes about yet another suicide by a young teenage boy who had reportedly been bullied at and around school.  Maybe its just me, but it seems like there has been an influx in recent years of teenage suicides ranging anywhere from 10 years of age to 20 and beyond.   So maybe it isn't strictly confined to the "teenage" years, but regardless, it seems like barely a month goes by where you don't hear about another suicide.  In this most recent case out of New York, it was a 12 year old boy who felt that all that was left for him was to take his own life.  Once again, bullying is being cited as a possible cause of this young boy's suicide.  Outside of the fact that the boy was a little shorter in stature than the other boys around, he was simply another boy in the neighborhood.  He had friends, he wasn't gay, and he tried to keep away from the bullies.  So what ultimately drove this boy to the point of no return?  No one really knows and probably never will at this point, but I am sure that bullying will take the brunt of the blame.  Now don't get me wrong, bullying is never OK, yet I would like someone to explain to me how bullying, which has been around since high schools were invented, has all of a sudden become the catalyst for suicide?  It used to be that bullying was merely something to be endured through school.  Some kids were bullied, others weren't, yet one thing is for certain, bullying has existed for a very long time.

So is the fact that bullying has become more prevalent in schools and has become more ferocious and degrading making an impact?  Or is it because something is lacking in these children's youth that doesn't give them the ability to deal with bullying the way kids in the past used to be able to?  I don't know, but for me, bullying is merely the final straw for most of these kids.  There has to be something besides bullying that is contributing to this influx in suicides.  I remember I used to be made fun of in grammar school.  I wouldn't necessarily call it bullying, yet it could have quickly transformed itself into "bullying".  I used to be made fun of for the shape of my head with other kids calling me light bulb.  I simply ignored them and moved on with my life.  There was also the fact that I had to have braces and as part of that, my upper pallet had to be spread first, creating a large gap between my two front teeth.  My classmates used to make fun of me for it, calling me all sorts of names.  My retaliation was to stick a ruler in between my teeth whenever they said something and most times it would gross them out and make them stop.  Like I said, none of this was especially harmful, but it could have been if I had a weaker self esteem and retreated instead of standing up for myself.  It didn't stop there.  I remember in high school having upper classmen try to get a reaction out of me by making fun of my last name.  They used to draw it out making it sound harsh and diminutive.  Over and over they would screw my name up, goading me on, trying to get me to lash out.  Did I?  Not the way they wanted.  Instead of lashing out with my fists, I merely repeated everything they said to the point where they got frustrated, I laughed, and they gave up.  I can see now how it could have had an effect and if I had lashed out, could have quickly escalated, but it didn't.  So how come kids are becoming so fragile now where they can't handle anything?

I know I have talked about bullying before, yet it seems like we aren't capable of addressing the real issue here; proper parenting at home.   More and more often, parents are deciding to leave the moral and ethical upbringing of their child to teachers and schools when they should be doing the jobs themselves.  If a child has a good foundation, built at home, then suicide wouldn't even be an option.  If children knew how to cope with bullying and were comfortable enough to discuss it with their parents, then we wouldn't see kids hanging themselves from shower curtains or trees, or slicing their wrists to little bits.  When will parents and schools take the blinders off, realize that bullying is merely the last straw, and truly start addressing the issue?  There are more and more initiatives to address bullying in the school, yet school takes up only 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for children.  What about the rest of the time that they are not in school and are still being bullied?  Parents need to start taking responsibility for the upbringing of their children and not rely solely on schools to do the job for them.  If a child is being bullied in one school, is it realistic to think that by switching schools they will stop being bullied?  In my mind no, but then again, my mind isn't normally in sync with what the rest of society deems reasonable or true.  In any case, suicide is a horrible end to any situation and I wouldn't want to have anyone close to me go through with it.  To counteract this surging trend, we need to get back to basics, back to real parenting, and raise kids the way they used to be raised years ago; capable of fending for themselves in the school setting.