I really don’t want to write about this. I don’t want to write, talk or even think about it. Call me superstitious, but I kinda believe in the power to “talk stuff up”. The mere mention of a thing, usually a bad thing, can breathe life into it and bring it to fruition. Let a sleeping dog lie. Leave well enough alone. Don’t start none, won’t be none (not sure that one works, but you get where I’m going). I know ridiculous, right?
In the sparse moments I have to check my phone for the latest happenings in the world, I came across a most distressing report. So disturbing was the article headline that I had to take a peek. I guess I fell victim to a kind of electronic rubbernecking. Before I could distract myself and tap my fantasy football app, my pointer finger was hammering down on some horrific words. The article’s contents are so compelling that to just drop my phone and walk away would be potentially catastrophic. So, write briefly about it, I must.
Elissa Nadworny’s article, “Middle School Suicides Reach an All-Time High”, confronts the unspeakable. Praise is due to her. A topic I have not been brave enough to discuss with my middle school students. What would I say? Where would I start? By bringing it up, will I somehow give someone a terrible idea? What would the parental reaction be if one of my students brought the topic home to their dinner table? I can hear it now, Um Mom, er Dad, Mr. Ransom said that suicide is… Oh did he now? Sounds to me like that Ransom fellow needs to stick to teaching history!
Such a coward I am, some things are just too scary to ponder. And talking to my own sons about such a chillingly sad subject like suicide, the risk of “talking it up” is just too great. I don’t want to put such ideas in their innocent heads. Apparently the thought is already in too many innocent heads.
What I learned from Nadworny’s piece is that the only real risk is not talking suicide with my students, to my sons. Even waiting until those smart mouthed high school days to have a “Teen Suicide” talk may be too great a risk to take. Children, some as young as 5, are ending their lives. The number of middle school deaths by suicide has now exceeded the number of deaths by car crash. Suicide is a reality, rather I recognize it or not. The idea that preteens can’t be suicidal is a myth.
We teachers see hundreds of children come and go on a daily basis; my middle school has a population of roughly 1,400 students. To believe that there are no children lugging a backpack down crowded hallways stuffed with sad thoughts, some suicidal, would be careless of me. To think that my own sons are immune to the grim reality of suicide would be equally reckless. If we are afraid to reach out and talk about suicide, prevention is forever out of our grasp. I am, and always will be, one who believes there’s always a chance. I’ve seen too many come from behind victories in my life to believe otherwise. The fact that suicide is not likely to be impulsive only betters our chances of a good outcome. “Kids spend weeks thinking about and planning their own deaths”, Nadworny writes. Good news to me, this only means we have the window of time we need to make a lifesaving connection. We could be complacent, silent, continue to avoid having the conversation. Perhaps take comfort that this hardly ever happens (in our lives anyway)...until it does. Until the window slams shut. When it does, lives get shattered.
I’m ready to step up my game, in my classroom, in my home. If we all do the same, one of us is guaranteed to save a life.