Another attack by a child. Yes, he was an adult by age but a meer child in respect to his time on this earth and experience under one’s belt.
This tragedy is very scary to any parent. It makes all of us as a society wonder if anywhere is safe anymore. The only thing we want to do is protect our children, yet these incidents keep occurring
As an Early childhood educator, I feel like we need to more consistently address mental health of all students. People see or hear mental illness and think taboo or “badness”. Yes, mental illness can spiral down a dark road of no return, but until our society wants to see mental illness early on and treat it, we are unfortunately going to continue to have issues with society going to extremes to be heard.
Did you ever have a bad day that you had a hard time coping , or could not stop crying ? Yes?
Picture feeling you never had anyone on your side or never been taught coping , organizational or leadership skills . Maybe no one noticed you when you were struggling or acting out to have your feelings acknowledged. If you are never taught about your feelings, taught how to understand them or express them it will become very challenging as an adult.
If you are a child who does not learn about feelings and having years of attention seeking behavior as a young child, fast forward to nineteen years old. Nineteen years of attention seeking behavior with no attention and being on an emotional roller coaster where society, parents, peers and teachers brush the behavior under the carpet or use the “its just a phase” excuse or its hormones, not understanding how to deal with emotion, stress and anxiety how do we expect children to become mentally health adults.
Children deserve to have their feelings acknowledged. We don’t want our children to be on a path of darkness or unknown. We don’t want our young adults to be in a position where they don’t understand their feelings or they do not know how to ask for help because they feel like no one has ever listened. When someone’s feelings or pain have been ignored for so many years, makes one angry and confused as evident with recent horrific events.
As a society we need to look at things very differently … quit using excuses for bad or not desired behavior such as but not limited to age, gender, came from a split home, history of death in family, etc. We need to teach children when they are young about emotions, what they are, how they make you feel, how to deal with those feelings/emotions. We need to become less of the society “here is my phone be quiet” and start having real conversations with our children about raw emotion.
When children don’t learn how to deal with emotions we end up with adults that do not know how to deal with emotions. With the increase of people needing mental health services ( which also needs to become more socially acceptable) and the decrease in number of mental health professionals out there, we need to work as a community to make sure we are raising social/emotionally healthy people.
