Some Things You Can't Take Back

    My heart was broken as I read of the two fourteen-year-old girls who died together in a suicide pact last Saturday. Haylee Fentress and Paige Moravetz were found over the weekend, having hung themselves in one of the girl’s homes in Minnesota. Both girls had been struggling in school and saw themselves as outcasts. They were made fun of repeatedly by classmates. The one girl had recently moved from Indiana and was never accepted in her new school, other than by another bullied girl, with whom she died.
    Kids rarely have any idea the kind of torment they can inflict on others. They get caught in the moment of deflecting their own pain or getting attention by getting the better of an easy target. It’s part of our sin nature. But the things those kids said will now haunt them for the rest of their lives. With all of their mechanisms for dealing with guilt, they will not be able to escape the gnawing awareness that their cruel words and thoughtless actions were felt so deeply that those poor girls could not see beyond eighth grade to want to keep living. And now there is nothing these classmates will ever be able to do or say to make up for or retract their culpability.
    Whenever my kids have complained of being bullied or put down by others at school (and yes, it happens to most kids to some degree), I have reminded them that it is far better to be bullied than to be a bully. Most kids who pick on and put down others have parents who have no idea how their kids are treating others. Sometimes its the kids from dysfunctional families, but as often it is the kids from stable middle class two parent homes who bully.
    Parenting is more than providing for our kids’ necessities and making sure they get a good education or do well in extra-curricular activities. As a father, I would far rather have a child who struggles with his grades and is sub-par in athletic or music performance, but kind and sensitive to the needs of others, than the other way around.
    We all grow out of middle school eventually and with maturity comes a certain level of fortitude to handle put downs (at least to know its not the end of the world) and the social maturity to back off the bullying. But many never grow out of the grade-school mentality of measuring their worth against others and attempting to elevate themselves by putting others down, either in ridicule or behind their back. I am sometimes shocked at the freedom some adults feel in criticizing and running another person down when they are not present to defend themselves. They excuse it with comments like, “I just needed to get it off my chest,” or “I needed to bounce it off someone else to get their thoughts,” all at the expense of someone else’s reputation.
    Adults hurt each other with their words as well. The people who are hurt may not enter into a suicide pact, but it hurts nonetheless. And the perpetrators inflict harm that, like the case of the mean eighth graders in Island Lake, Minnesota, can do the kind of damage that cannot ever be retracted.
    This would be a good time to talk with your kids about how they reach out to others. And it might also be a good time to do a self-assessment. Do your words always benefit the listener and the person you are talking about?
    “It is pleasant to listen to wise words, but the speech of fools brings them to ruin.” –Ecclesiastes 10:12