I miss you every year, little one. You would be nearly 12 now. I think of you every day, quietly. Thank you for the gift you gave me, so briefly, of knowing you.
Disaster TragedyCategory Archives
How to learn from a tragedy – 10yo girl suicides over bullying
And here is an endless grief story where nobody wins.
This poor little girl, suffering until driven to desperation.
Her traumatised family, asking themselves why they didn’t react sooner, why…
Little girls who, (like big ones), can be so cruel – but often don’t intend to be so cruel, they are just fitting in themselves, trying to work out the mores and ways of the culture they are in, a pecking order that all socialised creatures have. They will carry (except potentially in a few, sociopathic type cases) a dreadful guilt, learning too harsh a lesson.
If anything that we hope they would be, her teachers and prinicipal, wishing they had intervened earlier, not dismissed as ‘just kids’ scenario.
And all of us parents, the sad majority of which wince at recollections at how intensely felt the bullying was when we were recipients, (and shame if participants at the giving end), how we want to protect our kids, wondering how to do that without knee jerking into overprotectiveness so that our children are wrapped even further in paranoia and cotton wool, learning nothing but fear…
We need to ask if this is a big picture we are missing, or single incident? Media is of little help in this, the pedophile around every corner has gotten us terrified tolet our kids out to play, restricting their capacity to socialise independently with their peers in a way few groups have historically known.
And in the meantime, if you will excuse me, I am going to hug my 10yo daughter and 8yo son (and think about my other more grown daughters), and hope I know enough to have given them what they need to not face an abyss that this sad little girl could not get beyond.
Parents in a small town in Illinois suspect their young daughter took her own life after enduring years of bullying
via A 10-year-old’s ‘gut-wrenching’ suicide: Is bullying to blame? – The Week.
Related articles
- North Carolina Girl, 10, Committed Suicide (dreamindemon.com)
- Adjustment Problems Associated with Bullying (education.com)
- Bullied 10-year-old girl commits suicide – Source: WRAL (curmilus.wordpress.com)
- Bullying (education.com)
- Study: Bullying worse online than school (boston.com)
- Using Technology to Fight Bullying (blogs.ottawacitizen.com)
- Parenting Solutions: Bullied (education.com)
- Is bullying on the rise? (education.com)
- Phoebe Prince Again? Bullying Linked to Suicide of 10… (psychcentral.com)
- Bullying blamed in 10-year-old girl’s suicide (msnbc.msn.com)
- Bullying should be prevented! (hseketa8.wordpress.com)
- Bullying and Depression (education.com)
- What is bullying and how does it differ in boys and girls? (education.com)
- Time to Stand UP and STOP the MADNESS…. (camsgranny.wordpress.com)
Never fight a land war in central Asia…
Image by mknobil via Flickr
A quote form The Princess Bride that still resonates with truth. Maybe more politicians should have sene that classic and paid some attention.
The media has been engrossed in the saga of Qantas quite understandably – greedy execs! evil unions! country to hostage! weary travellers! sound bites! tension! outrage!
Perfect camera fodder.
There was, however, other main stories happening. One tragically huge one.
Three young men were gunned down, shot in the back by an Afghani soldier, someone they had treated as a comrade, someone who they believed they were helping train to defend his country. It sadly turned out his idea of that defence and theirs were polar opposites.
The lack of media involvement with this sad case, overwhelmed by the more media glamorous, and, to be fair, quite genuine upset of the travellers, does question how much consideration was given to real victims of long term suffering, the families left behind by these latest deaths. And how many more families, and how much longer are we there for…isn’t it time we stopped berating yet another greedy CEO and ask these questions for a while? The CEOs will obligingly still be opportunistic parasites, and thus will be there after we have tried to find solutions to this particular disaster.
As we mourn the death of three young men and their wounded comrades, perhaps we should be spending more time reflecting on how and why it is that they won’t be coming home. Surely it’s as important as showing us a middle-aged man angrily waving a Qantas frequent flyer card and berating the fact that he’s suck in the Qantas Club at Bangkok airport for an extra day.
Related articles
- Industrial deal may backfire on Qantas (theage.com.au)
- Deadly attack won’t shake us, vows Gillard (theage.com.au)
Death of this innocent means death of social innocence?
Well, indeed…this one has torn me up. That poor child. But don’t we all feel a twinge before robustly denouncing the Chinese, before claiming it would never happen here, wherever our here may be? Can any of us be totally sure?
How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts?
The death of the two-year-old run over as passersby ignored her is symptomatic of a deepening moral crisis
Japanese communities post Fukushima disaster may never be able to return.
An ongoing tragedy that should have more world attention.
Thousands of Japanese forced to evacuate their homes by the Fukushima nuclear disaster are facing the prospect of never being able to return.
