When A 10-Year-Old Commits Suicide
Is it really appropriate to "blame the school" in such a tragedy?
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.
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.
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