Why the words "child" and "suicide" do not belong in the same sentence..

Why, as someone without children, does bullying bother me so much?  Well,  it's probably because I have a heart beating inside my body.

Only someone without one of those key components of life, could sit down and watch a one hour episode of Anderson Coopers show about bullying, without wanting to run to the closest school and yell out "IT GETS BETTER, TRUST ME!!" until every kid in that schoolyard believes you.  I normally blog about light hearted topics, and the posts are usually filled with sarcasm - but today I can't justify any of that.  Today my heart hurts for all the kids who have come to a point in their little lives, where they feel like enough is enough.  Those poor little muffins who get tormented at school, online and lord only know where else - and feel like there is no where to turn.  It has to make you stop and think...

In my generation, when I was in elementary school, we had bullies.  Of course we had bullies.  So and so had cooties, and someone was a dork or a nerd.  Maybe a few people were "loners" and sometimes they dressed poorly or different then the 'norm'. People would snicker about others in the hallway, and on more then one occasion, someone left school and went home to cry.
I think it would be safe to say, that without a doubt, today's way of bullying is like nothing we could have imagined.

Facebook, Twitter, Formspring, email, MySpace (if it still exists by the end of this blog post) and countless other social media sites have invaded our lives and for most of us, for the better.  We all love the connections, and the ability to check in on your bff from Grade 3.

The flip side of all of this open communication, is that children are allowed to partake in the same activities.  Instead of going home after a rough day at school and having a good cry, kids go home already upset and then log onto one of the many social media outlets - and the bullying continues.  Maybe someone has made a group on Facebook about how Little Susie's shirt was tacky.  There are 4,600 comments about just how tacky that shirt truly was.  Maybe from that group, it has branched off to a Twitter hashtag for everyone at Susie's school to retweet, letting not only the classmates - but the entire world - know that #susieistacky.  Meanwhile, Susie sits and watches as more and more classmates, and maybe even strangers, join in the attack on her favourite shirt.  She feels that because it's her favourite and no one else agrees, that something is wrong with her.

So Susie throws out her shirt...
It doesn't change anything.

Day after day, outfit after outfit, it never ends - and this could be just ONE kid out of however many million kids there are in the world who deal with this on a daily basis. Kids are copycats, so if the child who instigates the Facebook group about how tacky Susie's shirt was happens to be considered a "cool kid" - then once they have started the group and 4,600 comments have been posted about how they are absolutely right about the tackiness of the shirt, the bully is then given the confidence of their newfound online supporters to carry out the same bullying face to face.

The recent story about Jamey Rodemeyer, the 11-year old who committed suicide because of a long battle with bullies, has left me wondering what is happening to this world we live in.  How does a child at that age even know that suicide is an option, and for the love of god how can they feel like that is the only way that things are ever going to get better?  His poor family.  His poor friends.  His poor self.  My heart goes out to that family, and every other family who has had to deal with losing their child.  CHILD! Not even a teenager.  It's not right.

I know we buy pink shirts once a year to show that we care about this issue, and I know that it gets talked about when a tragedy happens, but there has to be something that can be done to take some serious control.  If you got in as much trouble for bullying as you did for not doing your homework, maybe kids would be less likely to do it.  Obviously schools can't control the internet, but the internet can control the internet.  Make Facebook and Twitter only available to people who are mature enough to deal with the consequences that come along with it.  I know bullying can go on between adults, but at least an adult has the sense to look at the situation logically.  A child has less options available to them - because they're not old enough to even know what the options are!  I never had a class about how to handle being bullied, but then again I never had a Facebook group made about how tacky my clothes are.

Obviously, this issue is not something that will ever be totally resolved, unless we revert back to olden days where people treated each other with respect because it was the decent thing to do.  But, that being said, there has to be a way to make it better.  Even slightly...

Like I mentioned before, I don't have kids.  But, I hope that when the day comes that I do have a kid - if she wants to wear the tackiest shirt in the world to school - she will be able to do so without wanting to come home and swallow a bottle of pills.

We're going to die a lot sooner then these kids are, so we should probably figure out a way to keep them from disappearing, no?