Talking to Your Kids before They Go Back to School

For those of you with little ones, enjoy these precious innocent moments.  Sure you are up to your eyeballs in sippy cups and baby food but this afternoon I had a reminder about how complicated the teen years have become.

My children, age 9 and 13, are going back to school on Monday.  A friend of mine who works for our school system mentioned that she heard that a child from my son’s middle school had committed suicide last week. I hadn’t heard anything in the newspaper so I wondered (and hoped) it was a rumor.

I called a few other parents with children who go to the same middle school, and although none of them heard anything, one parent brought a tribute memorial Facebook page to my attention.  All it had was a girl’s name and RIP.

Unfortunately, after a little researching and Googling, I learned that it wasn’t a rumor and it was true.  The child was 14 years old, had gone to my son’s middle school and was about to begin high school next week.  Apparently, last Monday, August 9^th,  she took her life and it appears she threw it all away because she was being unmercifully bullied.  The tribute her father wrote in her memory guestbook brought me to tears as he wrote about his baby that he’ll never see again.

However, when I logged onto the Facebook page I found some hideous, disparaging remarks made about the girl on the page, about her suicide and what happened.  We all grieve in different ways but some of these comments were downright cruel.  None of this was even in the realm of being acceptable and should not be tolerated-you have to wonder, where are the parents behind these children writing awful comments?

It may be obnoxious but when I agreed to allow my son to have a Facebook page it was under the condition that I had full access (with password) to check it. Luckily, my son only wanted Facebook to play Farmville, lost his cell phone months ago and could care less.  In fact I’m on his Facebook page far more than he!

Anyway, I sat my son down to have a brief discussion of what I learned. I knew he would be bombarded with talk of this tragedy at school and I wanted to talk to him beforehand. He was bullied briefly back in fourth grade; however we worked through it with counseling and he learned the necessary skills to combat mean-spirited children. He learned that he has the power to change the situation.  I’m not the kind of parent that starts demanding that the school system or others change their behavior because that simply won’t happen.  I want my children to know that they have control over how they react and act, which is what he has learned.

Hearing about this suicide was like having an ice cold bucket of water dumped on your head.  How could this continue to happen again and again? I can only imagine the amount of guilt piled onto the enormous grief her parents must feel, how their lives are pretty much over.

It’s also terrible to think that so many parents are forced to work outside the home and the kids are left to their own devices.  So many middle (and elementary) school children were left at home all summer…alone at home while their parents worked.  Can’t be helped, but it leaves a lot of idle time.

I’m certainly not going to make a million bucks or even close.  Working in an office would probably make more sense financially, but now more than ever I’m thankful I’m here and accessible to my children whenever they need me.  Sometimes you can’t prevent tragedy, but this crazy life I’ve created, trying to work and take care of kids simultaneously, is the only way I can do it. Especially today.