It is a life cut short, one that would otherwise have a horizon of beautiful, awesome possibilities before it, erased by tragedy.
This is an issue about which we have no right to be pusillanimous. If anything at all, the deaths of our youth should summon from us resoluteness and thorough soul-searching.
There is, first of all, the way we rear them. It does not call for recondite science to recognize that the security of the home is the foundation of feelings of acceptance, welcome and safety that a person carries with him throughout life. There is nothing more devastating than the experience of rejection — by classmates, by groupmates, by peers — but when adversity hems in on all sides, a young man or woman should always be able to count on a family that will be accepting, nurturing and loving. In the Philippines, owing to the number of parents who work overseas, the phenomenon of absentee parenting is particularly challenging, for no one, really, can assure a child that the world is safe, and that someone will always be on his side like parents alone can. This is not an indictment of OFW parents. It is to point out a particular issue that involves both family economics as well as the demands of parenting.
It should, however, also be in the bosom of the family that the young are steeled for the tests of life. It does them tremendous disservice to create for them a fantasy world where every wish is fulfilled, every word becomes a command, one that spares them from all hurt and anguish. A wise, old grand-uncle once said: “A child must learn the pain of disappointment.” Parents who spare their children the experience of rejection, failure and disappointment, fashioning for them a world that does not exist. For beautiful though our world may be in many respects, it is also a fallen world where we live by the sweat of our brow and where, though diligently we sow, the soil often yields thorns and brambles.
This is the reason that I have always taken issue with that classic line in old-school pedagogy that cautions the teacher against saying that the child is wrong. This, to me, is very wrong. The child should be told that he can be wrong, that her answers are not correct, that someone has the answer that he does not have. There will be pain, there will be anguish in that realization — but there will also be growth. It is maturity to accept the fact that one can be wrong, that one’s mistakes have consequences, that one needs to learn.
Lately there has been a marked proliferation of online posts tending to perversely “glorify” the “courage” it takes to end one’s own life. Tragedy is abhorrently turned to spectacle. Suicide notes, accounts of youngsters falling into the deep end, even horrible pictures are not unknown. In some cases, the online audience is taken through a vlogger’s process of self-destruction. This should be a community concern, as it should be an appropriate matter for state action and the policing of what, at present, is the virtually chaotic environment of virtual space.
Finally, there is the fact that bullying takes forms today that did not take place in earlier times. While, in yesteryears, this took the form of embarrassing monikers, verbal slurs and probably even offensive gestures, today the bashing that one can get from habitues of virtual space, their virulence and their reach is unparalleled by anything in the past.
Many suffer in silence, reticent about letting family members know that they are the victims of relentless bullying, or ashamed to disclose the defect or the failing that elicits unkindness from the unkind, or concealing some closely guarded secret that it would break them to disclose to the members of their families. To me, what seems obvious is the need to keep lines of communication with one’s children open and constant — and to be sensitive to distress signals that, however, can be discerned only if one is no stranger to one’s own children.
School administrators cannot be lackadaisical nor dismissive because, sadly, school is where bullying abounds. School is where the weak are silenced even as they are shamed almost every day, and where the most painful wounds in a young person’s life are inflicted and borne, often without anyone knowing the depth of the anguish — although classmates and bullies may very well be aware of what weighs a classmate’s soul. Bullying should never be normalized and never should it be accepted as “part of growing up.” If education is not education toward respect for others and the cultivation of the constructive relations of friendship and the handling of intimacy, it is no education at all.
We in the Church must be constant companions, no matter that we run the risk of being looked at with suspicion as “child-molesters” or abusers. The possibility that the malicious will find fault should not deter us from journeying with the young. And when needed, we ought to be ready to throw them a lifeline. In fact, like life-guards, we should ever be ready to come to the rescue of the floundering. Stylizing things through penitential services or the sacrament of penance alone is not what young people need. Of course, they must be led to the sacraments and to receive, in faith, the grace that comes from them. But priests, catechists, lay volunteers can be creative about assuring the troubled young of someone willing to listen, a fellow-traveler willing to walk the dark and dreary paths along which many of the young, sadly lose the way. They can make their phone numbers or contacts readily available as “crisis lines.” Sometimes all it takes to save a life is someone willing to say; “I am here. I am listening.”
One young life lost to suicide is too many, especially because there is so much that we can do to keep such a tragedy from happening.
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
It is a life cut short, one that would otherwise have a horizon of beautiful, awesome possibilities before it, erased by tragedy.
This is an issue about which we have no right to be pusillanimous. If anything at all, the deaths of our youth should summon from us resoluteness and thorough soul-searching.
There is, first of all, the way we rear them. It does not call for recondite science to recognize that the security of the home is the foundation of feelings of acceptance, welcome and safety that a person carries with him throughout life. There is nothing more devastating than the experience of rejection — by classmates, by groupmates, by peers — but when adversity hems in on all sides, a young man or woman should always be able to count on a family that will be accepting, nurturing and loving. In the Philippines, owing to the number of parents who work overseas, the phenomenon of absentee parenting is particularly challenging, for no one, really, can assure a child that the world is safe, and that someone will always be on his side like parents alone can. This is not an indictment of OFW parents. It is to point out a particular issue that involves both family economics as well as the demands of parenting.
It should, however, also be in the bosom of the family that the young are steeled for the tests of life. It does them tremendous disservice to create for them a fantasy world where every wish is fulfilled, every word becomes a command, one that spares them from all hurt and anguish. A wise, old grand-uncle once said: “A child must learn the pain of disappointment.” Parents who spare their children the experience of rejection, failure and disappointment, fashioning for them a world that does not exist. For beautiful though our world may be in many respects, it is also a fallen world where we live by the sweat of our brow and where, though diligently we sow, the soil often yields thorns and brambles.
This is the reason that I have always taken issue with that classic line in old-school pedagogy that cautions the teacher against saying that the child is wrong. This, to me, is very wrong. The child should be told that he can be wrong, that her answers are not correct, that someone has the answer that he does not have. There will be pain, there will be anguish in that realization — but there will also be growth. It is maturity to accept the fact that one can be wrong, that one’s mistakes have consequences, that one needs to learn.
Lately there has been a marked proliferation of online posts tending to perversely “glorify” the “courage” it takes to end one’s own life. Tragedy is abhorrently turned to spectacle. Suicide notes, accounts of youngsters falling into the deep end, even horrible pictures are not unknown. In some cases, the online audience is taken through a vlogger’s process of self-destruction. This should be a community concern, as it should be an appropriate matter for state action and the policing of what, at present, is the virtually chaotic environment of virtual space.
Finally, there is the fact that bullying takes forms today that did not take place in earlier times. While, in yesteryears, this took the form of embarrassing monikers, verbal slurs and probably even offensive gestures, today the bashing that one can get from habitues of virtual space, their virulence and their reach is unparalleled by anything in the past.
Many suffer in silence, reticent about letting family members know that they are the victims of relentless bullying, or ashamed to disclose the defect or the failing that elicits unkindness from the unkind, or concealing some closely guarded secret that it would break them to disclose to the members of their families. To me, what seems obvious is the need to keep lines of communication with one’s children open and constant — and to be sensitive to distress signals that, however, can be discerned only if one is no stranger to one’s own children.
School administrators cannot be lackadaisical nor dismissive because, sadly, school is where bullying abounds. School is where the weak are silenced even as they are shamed almost every day, and where the most painful wounds in a young person’s life are inflicted and borne, often without anyone knowing the depth of the anguish — although classmates and bullies may very well be aware of what weighs a classmate’s soul. Bullying should never be normalized and never should it be accepted as “part of growing up.” If education is not education toward respect for others and the cultivation of the constructive relations of friendship and the handling of intimacy, it is no education at all.
We in the Church must be constant companions, no matter that we run the risk of being looked at with suspicion as “child-molesters” or abusers. The possibility that the malicious will find fault should not deter us from journeying with the young. And when needed, we ought to be ready to throw them a lifeline. In fact, like life-guards, we should ever be ready to come to the rescue of the floundering. Stylizing things through penitential services or the sacrament of penance alone is not what young people need. Of course, they must be led to the sacraments and to receive, in faith, the grace that comes from them. But priests, catechists, lay volunteers can be creative about assuring the troubled young of someone willing to listen, a fellow-traveler willing to walk the dark and dreary paths along which many of the young, sadly lose the way. They can make their phone numbers or contacts readily available as “crisis lines.” Sometimes all it takes to save a life is someone willing to say; “I am here. I am listening.”
One young life lost to suicide is too many, especially because there is so much that we can do to keep such a tragedy from happening.
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
