If Your 10 Year-Old Commits Suicide, Should You Sue The School District?

Is it really appropriate to "blame the school" in such a tragedy?

Broader Update: The parents are in fact suing the school district.

Let me get into this with a quick anecdote/story.

Years ago, a family near me (20 or so miles) had their young son committ suicide. Absolutely awful. I didn’t really know the family, but had some overlapping friends. The kid’s dad is now an advocate for children’s mental health, and has even been mentioned in The New Yorker.

I was in a church group at the time and this seemed shocking. How could a 10 year-old even know what suicide is, much less do it? So I brought it up in this text chat we had. I just wanted to know people’s thoughts or opinions on what would possibly drive a 10 year-old kid to want to die. We came together as friends via religion, so I figured maybe this was a “safe” topic.

Mostly I got generic responses. This one woman, who ended up being a total bitch on about 14 different dynamics of adulthood, went nuts on me for “speculating” and told me “I didn’t know anything.”

To be clear: I don’t know anything. That’s part of why I ask questions and write stuff. Sue me.

That woman was also pregnant at the time this happened, and I’m sure she was terrified of 1.7 million different things. I get it.

Well, now we have another one: a boy named Sammy Teusch in Indiana.

Here’s one article.

And here’s a video on it:

The central narrative here seemed to be that this kid was really nice and energetic and friendly, and you see some of that in the b-roll on the video above. It is a very sad situation.

But, he got bullied. Apparently some kids bullied him on the bus, initially for having glasses, and then they knocked off his glasses and broke them. His mental health was declining relative to the bullying.

Then, a tragic end happened.

Let me get personal for a second here.

I was definitely bullied at this age, mostly for being fat. One time, in sixth grade, I went to a co-ed dance and danced with this girl named Kathleen. I called her a few times (“Oooooh!”) and then “asked her out,” insofar as you can do that at age 12. We were going to meet for lunch on a Saturday. About an hour before we were going to meet, she called to cancel. I was a little fat nerd and I’m sure she wanted nothing to do with it. My mom, trying to be protective, called back her mom and basically told her mom “Send her.” So we had this incredibly awkward date for a burger in 1992 or whatever it was.

Kathleen had a friend, Hayden (sp?), who was popular among some guys I went to school with. Hayden told them what happened. I got teased for about 24 months about this: “Your mom gets you dates!”

One kid was named Eddie Simmons. I have no idea where he is these days, or honestly if he’s alive, but I still remember the name because he hazed me so badly for those years.

But: I didn’t kill myself. I cried and stuff, but I didn’t harm myself.

Tons of kids get bullied at this age, especially boys. (Girls are a different kind of brutal.)

So it’s worth asking: what happens to make some situations tragic and some situations normal?

I am probably not qualified to answer medically, but here are some thoughts:

1. In the video and various articles about this suicide, the dad keeps blaming the school. I don’t know how to feel on that one. I think the school has some blame, sure. Even in the video, the Superintendent of that district says he’s “too busy” to talk to the reporter. You’re too busy to discuss a 10 year-old suicide? What else is above on your to-do list? I get why you’d blame the school, but you are also the parent of that kid, and you can tell him: “Hey, this all sucks but it does get better. Want to go get ice cream or see a sporting event?” I realize it’s not that simple, but I think sometimes we let parents off the hook for too much. We give them too many other things to blame: the schools! The phones! The society! At some point, you need to try and raise the bar for this kid. It’s kind of the same with “online child safety.” We always toss this up to the government, but can’t parents do it too?

2. Go back to my mom anecdote above. I don’t really love that my mom forced Kathleen’s mom into that date, but let’s say I was being bullied. If my mom called that bully’s mom and said “Cut the shit,” I’d dig that. I’d probably be bullied more and called “a pussy,” but I mean, my parents would have gone to bat for me, and that’s cool. I just don’t see how that’s the “school” responsibility. Schools have a lot going on, not the least of which is having to admit that they exist as day care for many.

Remember all the mocking of Hilary for “It Takes A Village?” Part of that is because people hate her. But if you think about that statement inherently, it means a group of people. That would include:

• Parents

• Schools

• Grandparents

• The government and social safety nets

• Siblings

• Friends

• Cousins

• Neighbors

• Etc.

If you want to stop a 10 year-old from taking his own life, I think you need a majority of the above. If it’s just parents and not school, that’s hard. If it’s just school and not parents, that’s also hard. (I am sure a lot of schools struggle with a lack of parental involvement, especially after COVID.)

So maybe, ideology about the Clintons aside, it does take a village. And maybe that’s how we should be thinking about this stuff.