Loving our kids… it takes a village

Where to start?

Another young life was lost in Goulburn last week.

I know nothing about the boy but I can guarantee he was someone’s much loved, beautiful boy… that he was a special part of someone’s life, probably many lives. Like any teen… like any of us… he no doubt had his share of faults, flaws and foibles. Don’t we all.  But he should still be here with us today with a chance to discover the world around him.

It’s a tragedy and I can’t imagine what his family is going through or feeling.

This year… the last few years… have been a horrible time for losing some of our young people. To car accidents, to drugs and alcohol, to depression and suicide… to bullying. Whatever the cause, it all feels so unnecessary.

It’s tough enough to get our kids safely through to their teens – safe from dangerous illnesses, backyard accidents, innocent mistakes… all of the things we shudder at when we listen to the nightly news.

And once you get your kids there, you hope and pray they’ll remain safe. But you can’t guarantee it. The world is changing so quickly, so dramatically, that grown adults struggle with some of the changes let alone young men and women.

Drugs are more widely available and more heavily pushed on kids than at any other time in history. Peer pressure, which is not at all a new concept, has been amped up to incredible levels and has only been exacerbated by social media.

And bullying has not only increased in frequency, but now operates with an intensity previously unknown. The omnipresent internet has meant for some, it is insidious, persistent and virtually inescapable.

In fact, in light of the new avenues for bullying via social media, the word bullying itself seems a dramatic understatement. It’s not the occasional punch in the arm, wedgie or toilet swirly. The type of bullying kids experience today is more akin to terrorism and torture.

A fully grown and trained soldier, submitted to social subjugation and isolation, continual harassment and personal attack, and unrelenting esteem destruction would struggle to cope. Many grown adults DON’T cope with it which we’ve seen very graphically in recent times. How much tougher must it be on our kids?

Some media commentators have called for the closure of social media forums like Twitter and Facebook. Maybe if they’d been around in the infancy of telephones, or radio or television they’d have called for their closure too. But that’s not a solution.

You can’t “uninvent” the internet or social media. And even if you could, you shouldn’t. Just like in the real, non-cyber world, there are things done online that are fantastic and helpful, and there are things that are disgusting and horrible.

There should be consequences, for sure. We need stronger legal remedies for people who hurt others online including hefty fines and jail time, and I’m sure not too many people would argue with that. Ramp up the repercussions and do it soon.

But that’s the punishment side and by then it’s a day late and a dollar short. It kicks in after it’s too late for the individual concerned.

We need to consider why kids, and sadly why many adults, are attacking people so callously online.

Just as with adults, there are some kids that are just plain nasty and hurtful. For them, the anonymity of the internet is the perfect place from which to inflict pain.

But there are many other kids … GOOD kids… who join in some of these online attacks with a throwaway angry line here, a nasty comment there, without giving a thought to the consequences.

There are kids who get swept away in mob mentality, sometimes feeling justified in correcting someone for a perceived wrong, without a thought to the cumulative effects of bullying and social ostracising of a young person.

One thing there is never a shortage of is blame. Some want to blame the schools, or the parents, or the friends, or the internet. It’s usually too complicated for a simple answer and often not the fault of any of those groups. Likewise, finding a solution is pretty bloody difficult.

But some of the solution is in COMMUNITY.

It takes a village to raise a child, and that’s no disrespect to parents. The best parents in the world aren’t mind-readers and sadly they are sometimes the last place a distressed child will go to express their feelings. It’s also not a criticism of schools, or friends or anybody at all.

We are ALL involved in the lives of the children in our community because we ALL model behaviours to them.

WE ALL have the chance to show kindness and love to them.

We ALL have the opportunity and the obligation to ensure our kids live in a safe and supportive environment, in which there are consequences to their actions, sure. But in which we all contribute to getting them through this difficult time of peer pressure, alcohol, drugs, bullying, of being emotionally overwhelmed, depressed and even suicidal.

If nothing else, a strong message needs to go out to our kids that we love them, and not only individually but from the whole community. To over-ride the depth of sadness and despair some kids are feeling, perhaps it should be something bold and dramatic.

What if we close the town for a day? What if parents take the day off work, kids take the day off school, not for a bludge day or holiday, but to get together for a rally as a sign of unity that we love and care about our kids and want to find some solutions?

Maybe that’s “undoable”.

But we have to show our children (and I mean all of the children in this community) that they are loved and aren’t alone.

There have been too many young funerals in Goulburn over the last few years. It takes a village to raise a child and it’s time for this village to stand as one.

Originally published on the Goulburn Post website.