tougher laws.... or grow kids with thicker skin?

[Grampa]

A few days ago, Michelle and I had a discussion about advanced technology and how they keep making devices to make our lives simple and easy. Well, just about every device we came up with had some sort of dumbing drawback to it.

TV remotes..... if it's misplaced, all hope for changing a channel seems to be lost

Microwaves.... real cooking is such a lost art, that there are TV shows where the guy who now does what my grandmother once did is now treated like a rockstar.

Cash registers... god help us if the power goes out. same with calculators.

I think the same can be said for societal advancement. one step forward...two steps back.

Maybe it's time to flip the script and go back instead or forward. One step backward, two steps forward.

[Bun-bun]

I think the same can be said for societal advancement. one step forward...two steps back.

Maybe it's time to flip the script and go back instead or forward. One step backward, two steps forward.

He's a witch!

He put a hex on my Iphone!

Burn him!!

[RAT900]

Crazier than a shit house rat but he does offer some interesting insights into the effects of technology


http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

[Ddan]

You've done it now   

[herm]

both.

kids (and their parents) need to "man up" and learn to fend for themselves. dont take shit from assholes, take responsibility for your actions.......i know, crazy talk.

on the other hand, without reading the article (and im not going to)...sounds like there could have been some kind of intervention which might have averted tragedy.,

[Speedbag]

Back when I grew up, if somebody hit you, you hit them back. Assuming it didn't escalate wildly, all was good. Even resulted in some eventual new friendships....

[Grampa]

future problems

[RAT900]

At best, we are higher-order primates chock full of pretentious notions about how evolved we are

we have this silly notion that our intellects somehow trump or outweigh the moods, behavior patterns and feelings associated with us as a species ...they don't trump anything........ we just kid ourselves

to cite an example....my dogs know whether or not I am actually going to go into the office before "I" have made up my mind about it

"I" am still debating the idea of getting on a train and sitting in the office for the day....

yet my dogs,, who are master students of my behavior (as opposed to students of what I say or think) have already seen a pattern in my behavior that I am not even aware of.....

it is a pattern that communicates I am not going anywhere near the workplace on that day

I don't know if it is my facial expression sequences, whether or not I go for that 3rd mug of coffee or not...whatever it is they read those telltales and know

well.... so much for me thinking I made the final decision at the conscious-rational level

all I did was backfill a supporting logic or rationale for a decision that was already made by some part of me I don't understand or chat with

we are animals first...everything else is optional and more often than not ,,, just so much "window-dressing"

[djrashonal]

Firstly, I want to say I'm very impressed at the responses.  There are many different views and ideas, some on opposing sides and all have been received very well, and everyone has been pretty respectful, I like that.  

People who were bullied in school to some degree or another are liable to look at this story and think I didn't check myself out, she's a weaker person for doing it.  There is truth to that.  These kids should be punished for being evil pregnant doges, but not for the suicide of this girl.

On the other hand, I have never heard anyone say "I was bullied relentlessly throughout school, and thank god for that."  Bullying is a common thing, but not an inherently healthy thing, either for the giver or the receiver.  You may live through the experience of being bullied and come out a stronger, more secure person, but we shouldn't let bullies go unpunished to force that outcome.  To me there is no real value in letting assholes operate with impunity, especially at that age.

I think this was very well said.  

In a world where we pat ourselves on the back and say we've removed failure and made things fair for our children... the end result has been kids who cave in because they've never known failure. They don't grasp the concept of consequences, because mom and dad reasoned with them for 2 hours at Kmart when they pitched a fit.

This is Huge, Not giving your kids a chance to fail and teaching them that everything is fair is not preparing them for the world. It may be preparing them for the world people would like to live in, but not the one that they're gonna enter at 18.

It's been said plenty in this topic but I think there needs to be a medium. Kids need to be allowed to scrap there knees again, or bang their elbow without being coddled and rushed to the emergency room. They need to learn that you will get hurt, but also learn to reason that even though you're hurt it's really not that bad.

Kids are not being prepared, and that is the parents' fault. Kids are not taking responsibility for their actions, and that is the kids' fault. With everything being made so easy with technology and not wanting to offend someone or giving everyone a trophy because everyone is a winner makes it difficult for the next generation of children to become productive members of society. Everyone is not a winner, sometimes people lose, and it's what you teach your kids to do after they lose that will make the most impact on them. Will they just quit, or give up? Or will they analyze what they did wrong, figure out how to improve and be better at it next time?

Suicide is always tough and my condolences go out to the family, but like others have said, these kids facing prison time didnt kill this girl. She killed herself. It wasnt just the bullying, it was whatever else that was going on in her world and the bullying just compounded that. Are the parents gonna face jail time because the girl thought that she was doing too many chores in the house, or she didnt like being grounded from talking on the phone? There are so many things that influence people's decisions in life that it's hard to single out a reason, but it's easy to point fingers so the family can feel justified even though they could have been just as big of a cause to how the girl was feeling as the bullys were. Now these kids lives will be ruined because they teased a girl that wasnt taught it was ok to fail, or there is a life after a boy that dumps you, or that its not the end of the world if you dont go to the mall today.  

Kids dont have the perspective that adults do, their world tends to be a lot smaller so the importance of everything in it is compounded. I agree that kids need to start taking responsibility for their actions, but first they need to be taught the proper way to do that. The proper way is not a witch hunt to ease a family's sadness.

sorry for the rant
/rant

[RAT900]

Actually a good rant...clearly the parents want to be granted absolution from whatever feelings of guilt they may harbor about their child's incapacity to continue in life

and they see the prosecution and conviction of others as a way to get themselves off the hook for their contributions to their child's failure....

the child had no core foundation of self-worth that would get her through adversity....can we blame the students for that too?

[IZ]

She was obviously a pretty girl.  If she only got it in her head that they were picking on her because they were most likely jealous of her?!   Unfortunately, for so many kids her age..the opinions of others is all that matters.  Obviously, the girl had other underlying problems.  The bullying was just the final straw. 

I feel sad for her..only 15.    

[Bladecutter]

This is definitely a hard topic to cover.
Something to remember is that most of the responses here have been from males.

Life as a teenager is entirely different for males than it is for females, as we all know.
For us guys, dealing with a bully is simple, kick him in the nuts at the first opportunity, and stomp his brains out as he turtles on the ground.

Girls don't have it so easy.
Their self image is constantly changing as they go through their cycles, and is never cemented until well past high school.
Being a pretty girl even makes it harder for some, because then they have to not only deal with jealous vicious girls, but then deal with teenage boys who want what they want, and then boast about it to everyone, including their current girl friends, who then go about punishing a trifling slut, who in this case, was this girl who killed herself.

From what I took out of the story, it sounds like the girl screwed around with some older boys, who were already in relationships with older boys. The boys then boasted about it, and it got back to their girlfriends. The girlfriends then decided to make her life a living hell. All of that is normal teenager behavior, and actually carries over into adult life, as we all know.

All the 15 year old girl wanted, as far as I know, was a relationship with one of the boys, and it didn't seem like it mattered which one. Instead, she got used by the boys, boasted about as an easy lay all around school, then tormented by the girls for being a slut, 24 hours a day, in a small town community, where everyone knows everyone, and that you can't easily get away from.

Those of us who grew up in large cities (I grew up in NYC, in the Public Schools), know that life is entirely different than those who grow up in small back water communities. Its alot easier to learn how to deal with stuff like this when you are in a school that has 3k kids. You can make new friends alot easier, and get your friends to support you. When you are in a small town like she was, and your "friends" start turning on you, you then are isolated, and life becomes unbearable.

So you know what?
I think the kids are responsible for her death.
Teenagers are not mentally stable on a good day.
You throw in behavior like that, including forced isolation, and all these different kinds of abuse, and you are looking at a kid staring off a precipice, with a pride of hungry lions blocking the path to safety. What do you choose? Death by the lions, or death by the long fall and splat at the bottom? Its a no win situation, but in the mind of the girl, the quick death means that its OVER, plain and simple. Not just 3 more years of being treated like this in HS, and then an unknown amount of years after that either in college with the same people, or out in the real world trying to get a job.

Ultimately, I think that the only thing that would have saved this girl would have been if her family was involved (single mom? both parents? Divorced? I have no idea), and switched her schools, or just plain moved to a new community.

That, or if she got a job after school.
Its amazing the changes that kids go through once they start to experience the working world.
She would have developed skills that would have helped her deal with stress just from having to deal with stress at work.
Last time I checked, no one has ever offed themselves after having a bad day working the front counter at Burger King.

Its a no-win situation for everyone involved.
The boys used her as a sex toy, and boasted about it afterwards.
The girls tormented her for being a trifling whore with their boyfriends, and got all of their friends involved in making her life hell.
The school did nothing when informed of what was happening, but they didn't force her to have sex with the boys, nor did they tell the girls to deal with the slut.
The parent(s) of the girl ignored whatever signs that she put out that her life was falling apart.

Everyone is to blame, but yet no one is ultimately responsible.

Its not like the girl killed herself with a gun that she bought from a store, after telling the shop owner that she was going to use it to kill herself. Then you would actually have someone to blame directly for her death.

We don't have that here.
But I don't think she is to blame for her wanting to end her torment and humiliation in a small town.

BC.

[muskrat]

Sad indeed.  I however stand on the "thick skin" side and believe kids should learn how to deal with it.  When did we start handing out trophies to all the kids in little league for losing as well?  No one here was brought up that way and it taught us something.  The bullies should be responsible for their part but this, IMO, could have also been a disturbed girl that needed help - this could have very well been the trigger.