Jasmine McCain
Ashlynn Conner
Jasmine is a beautiful flower, and Ashlynn means “Dream” in Gaelic. This week two 10-year-old girls, Jasmine McClain of North Carolina and Ashlynn Conner of Illinois, committed suicide. Both were targets of bullying.
Samantha West found her 10-year-old daughter Jasmine McClain hanging from a belt in her home. What does it take to end a flower’s life? What is the breaking point? Ashlynn Conner, found hanging by a knitted scarf from a rod in her closet, came home the day before her suicide and told her family she didn’t want to go back to school — and wanted to be home-schooled. Where does a dream go when all paths to hope for a better tomorrow are barricaded by fear and despair?
We can speak words that hurt. We can speak words that heal. We can speak words that help. Either way, our words — even without actions — are so much more powerful than we can imagine. What can seem to many like fun or even sport has the power take away all hope and joy and can create despair so deep and dark that it ends a life. Likewise, what may seem so obvious and incidental to us that it isn’t worth mentioning or acting upon — a hand of help or the sharing of hope — can literally lift a life up, or save a life. That is how powerful we all are, and can be, if we make the effort. The evidence is everywhere. Are you willing to stand up and add your voice to cry for change and act in concert for real solutions?
What must it be like, as an innocent child – a flower that is crushed under heels and has its petals picked day after day? Bullying is a war of attrition. Little by little, piece by precious piece, the flower and the dream are torn apart until death seems like the best — no, the only — option. How bad does the torment have to be in a 10-year-old’s life to see suicide as a way out, as freedom from a world with no hope?
And what is the lesson for all adults? The short answer is this: If bullied children seek out a teacher and their pleas for help are not heard, or if children turn to their parents or their peers and their fears are minimized or dismissed, then where can they go? For a child, these three resources are their only options – and their entire world. We, the adults in their lives, are their best choice and most import option. And if we are too busy with the details of our own lives to listen and respond appropriately, then we fail them.
Children are dying. We are intertwined and interdependent. We are all together in this. This reality is not in another place, it is here and now and very present in our lives.
What other flowers and dreams are being crushed around us?
Right now, our children are listening and watching. They learn from our words, our TV shows, our highly evolved ways of humiliating and mistreating each other for sport or mere entertainment’s sake. What are the children around you learning? They do not know the power they have. Perhaps we don’t either. Why doesn’t someone do something? Instead of asking why, let’s start doing something right now.
Here’s what we can we do, as adults with children in our lives, to help address bullying and prevent child suicide:
1. Talk to children, no matter their age. We are hearing of incidents of bullying in children as young as age three. Ask children if they or anyone they know is being bullied or hurt. Children are sometimes very afraid of being tagged as tattle-tales. Many bully victims will not want the bully to get into trouble and are afraid of retribution. Creating a calm, rational and clear space for children to bring up and discuss awkward or difficult situations will make it easier for them to open up — and for you to help.
2. Give children permission to feel the way they do about the situation, and encourage them to speak up if they are a victim, or stand up and be a friend to a victim. In fact, many children are bystanders and witnesses to bullying incidents. Bystanders are so much more powerful than we realize. They can speak up and alert authority figures and even let bullies know that what they’re doing is not cool. Of course, children should not try to break up fights or get directly involved in physical altercations. But social groups are very powerful and can be used equally for good as for harm.
Here are two common mistakes adults make in communicating with children:
1. We assume a child’s mind is like our own — or we think that treating children like adults will help them grow up and prepare for adulthood. Children’s minds are so much more vulnerable than we can imagine. They can grow up to be self-confidant, responsible teens and adults if they are raised in an age appropriate way. But they need good, consistent, present and regular examples to serve as their guides. Not just once, but every day. Images, attitudes, words and behaviors that seem normal to us can be confusing, even traumatic, to a young child. Their emotions shut down and they cannot think clearly in situations that we may not perceive as stressful from our experienced adult points of view.
2. We assume that values and character education will be picked up by osmosis — that children don’t always need clear instruction in the subtle ways of social and ethical interactions. But just as in arithmetic and literature, children need to be taught how to care and how to speak. And they need to be encouraged, regularly, to look at the world around them and ask questions about what’s taking place in it. Children simply don’t know about life and living until we teach them. If we don’t teach them, someone else will. Who would you rather have teach them – strangers? Uninformed peers? Adults with no personal stake in your children’s lives? Are you willing to take that chance on you child’s life and future?
Here’s what I hope you’ll do:
Talk to other parents and grandparents. Spread the word that bullying is not ok, and that there is hope. There is always hope. Share this blog and today’s post on FaceBook. Check in with the young people in your life. Whether they let on or not, you are a role model. They are watching you, looking to you for how to be, how to act, what to say and what to do. They need the power of your presence, and experience, and heart.
Listening to a hurting child can save a life. So can asking those tough questions, and reaching out to others. We all know what it is like to hurt. We are all human. And if we try, we can even remember times in our own lives and childhoods when we felt afraid, overwhelmed and nearly out of hope.
Engagement is now our greatest asset in helping to ease the immense suffering caused by this hate crime we call bullying. Sometimes it just takes one adult to ask how a child is, and when he or she takes a chance and answers with a difficult truth, we can say, “I understand. Me too.” And we can help protect them, and guide them down a safer and more hopeful and promising path to the future – and to a better life.
In the next few blog entries, I plan to share some really cool stories about how two children, ages 3 and 4, learned a powerful life lesson because an alert and engaged grandparent took the time to talk to them about bullying. Stay tuned, and please come back for more information and resources. Until then, IM4U Jasmine & Ashlynn, and I’ll love you forever.
Uncle Jim
LINKS:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/10390079/
