A 10-year old boy commmited suicide in our town this week

[RevolutionStartsNow]

There is of course not a lot of information released, but apparently he shot himself while home alone after school; his 14 year old brother came home and found him.

My 10-year old son goes to a different school in the district, but he goes to a fantastic afterschool program that includes classmates of this boy.

The woman who runs the aftershool program was concerned that counselors hadn't been brought in immmediately to the elementary school, so she brought some in to the afterschool program, which is for kids grades 2-6.

Here's my problem: the counselors apparently told the kids that they weren't sure it was suicide and that maybe the boy died of some natural cause or disease. This was not true; the police concluded it was suicide by handgun very quickly (I imagine they can tell, based on the condition of the body, gunpowder marks on the hands, etc.). Presumably the counselor was trying to "soften" it for the kids.

My son came home and I gently asked him if he'd heard about this (sure that he had), and he said yes but the boy probably didn't kill himself, the police didn't know for sure, maybe he died of natural causes, and the newspapers sometimes reports rumors or lies (at least I taught him that much).

I did carefully explain to him that indeed this looked like the police concluded suicide; I think kids need to know that this is possible, even at this incredibly young age, and that there is help if they are feeling hopeless.

My heart breaks for this young kid and his family. Of course the family is being very private about it, and any speculation as to why he did it is only rumor. I was told it had to do with a bad grade, but certainly there could be much more to it than that.
By all accounts this was a stable home, but then again you never know.

Any parents or others with experience here think I should talk to my son more about this? It doesn't seem to be on his mind, probably mostly because he didn't know the boy directy.

[soothsayer]

1. Dunno, but could have been an accident, too (unless there was

a note). I guess if you want to do a "don't play with guns" kind of lecture you could.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

2. Yes, the loaded gun in the house thing is part of it

My son like most other 10 year old boys has a fascination with guns; actually he's outgrown it somewhat in the past year or so. I would never ever have a loaded gun in my house, and I have no idea why these people did.

I think if there wasn't evidence that this was suicide, it would probably have been reported as a possible accident, which it wasn't.

We've also recently (in the past year) had 2 people killed in hunting accidents, one of them a 14 year old boy...

But guns don't kill people...

[FyurFly]

29. No they dont, people do n/t

[qanda]

3. My own son is 10 years old

I cannot even imagine him thinking about doing something like that, let alone coming to grips with one of his friends doing that. I don't have any advice, but your community will be in my thoughts and prayers.

[seabeyond]

4. tough one. thru out youth suicide there are generally copycat followers

i would be happy that the school is so sensitive to this phenomenon. it is a bad one. with these suicides kids see the attention, they dont think the end of life and it feeds in their own unhappiness. i wouldn't even want it focused on so much and if it was older age i would want it addressed very carefully

i experienced a suicide with my mother. this is one subject i would be very very careful giving to kids. though i have not told kids exactly how mom died and i will eventually tell them the truth i dont want them to know about it now. i dont want them to see it as an out in teenage years when things become more rough and chemicals are flowing all over the place

[Blue Diadem]

12. We are dealing with it in a town close by

3 suicides last school year, one already this year and another 2 attempts with a possible 3rd attempt all within the last 2 weeks. I've heard from reliable sources that all the kids are connected in some way to the first one last year. They've had and continue to have the counselors and the programs..it keeps happening. :-( How can one get across to the teens the permanence of death vs the temporary feelings of despair?

My granddaughter found the first one last year..she was 6 at the time..a horrible thing for her. :-( No one was sure how much she understood what she'd seen..the counselor suggested waiting until she wanted to talk about it. She slowly did ask questions over time. We did not tell her it was suicide..we told her it was an accident. It was a long while after that she awoke with an awful nightmare(she has night-traumas)describing in her shrieks the location where the boy had died.


I'm glad you are keeping it from your kids for now. I'm so sorry about your Mom. :hug:

[seabeyond]

14. powerful post. that is horrible.

and hugs to your granddaughter. poor baby. just too much. yes to your post.

[RebelOne]

5. A co-worker's son committed suicide about 10 years ago.

He was 15 years old. He took his father's gun to school, stood up in class and shot himself in the head. He was a victim of bullying in school. He was very overweight, so of course, the others bullied him mercilessly.

[Zodiak]

26. man..."jeremy's spoken", indeed

I am sorry your coworker went through that. Bullies have no idea how much damage they can cause.

[benEzra]

31. Sadly, that's not an uncommon story.

http://www.jaredstory.com/
http://www.jaredstory.com/bully.html
http://www.jaredstory.com/adult_problem.html

That site (put up by the mother of a child who committed suicide after years of being bullied) is full of similar stories. My wife was the victim of bullying in school as a child, and even though she's now 35, she STILL has emotional scars from that.

I am glad that our children's school works to create a positive environment. Sadly, some schools don't, or take the attitude that "it's not OUR fault."

[Red Right and BLUE]

32. Sadly I can relate.

I don't want to care about things that happened so long ago, but truly it hurts and you never quite forget it.

[mentalsolstice]

35. Ditto

I have mild cerebral palsy, and as an adolescent, I was terribly bullied. My parents were of the thinking that they did not want to over-protect me, or that I was exaggerating...both had been popular kids in school. So I was totally alone in my battles. Let me tell you, the scars last a life-time. Although I was smart and ambitious, I've always had a self-confidence issue and it has been a real obstacle in my life.

[Red Right and BLUE]

36. Me too.

My only offense seemed to have been being a poor kid.

[Lucy - Claire]

33. We have had a spate of kids commiting suicide...

int the UK. Mostly due to malicious bullying at school.
In our papers today an 8 year old girl killed herself after watching
Girl,Interrupted.

[KurtNYC]

6. In a way I would think "natural causes" would be equally if not

more disturbing than suicide. The idea that this kid was walking around healthy one minute and then dead of "natural causes" would imply that it could happen to any 10YO and without warning.

I think you did very well to bring up the subject and then back off a little. Surely your son knows he can talk to you about this or anything that concerns him.

Sadly, I don't think we have adequate mental health care in the USA. I found out firsthand how horrible it would be to call a hotline about 15 years ago. I was living in Los Angeles and working in the HR department of a large company. They were in the process of hiring a child molester (I saw the background check info) and the guy called me a couple times during the day - was very pushy and tried to be manipulative with me. I am used to dealing with pushy people but this whole situation disturbed me deeply. Due to confidentiality laws at the time I couldn't discuss how disturbed I was by the whole situation with anyone. I was not suicidal by any means but that evening I called the county's suicide hotline around 10pm -- I got an answering machine! I called other helplines until I finally got a person. They told me if I was not suicidal they could not talk to me. Eventually I was referred to a psychiatrist who wanted me to pay up front at like $125/hour. Again, I was never suicidal but I couldn't help thinking 'what if I was?' I think the first answering machine would have been the end.

[bif]

7. 13 year old nephew of a friend shot himself last year

So sad to see a whole class attending a funeral for one of their classmates. At that tender age.

[Neurotica]

8. A teenager in our neighborhood did the same this week

Last night I asked my 11-year-old son if he had heard about anything at school. He hadn't, so I told him briefly what had happened. I was concerned that he would hear about it -- and hear incorrect information -- through the grapevine since this happened in our immediate neighborhood. There was apparently a precipitating event; I don't know if other factors played a role.

My main point in telling my son about it was to say that nothing is ever that bad, and no matter what may happen to him, he always has our love and support. I also wanted to encourage him to feel free to talk to us about anything.

I still don't know if I should have said something or not. He asked a few questions and then said that he didn't want to know any more. He then tried to reassure me (!) that he was ok and that he would always talk to us.

I'm not going to bring it up directly anymore -- I just plan on reinforcing our support for him. You may want to consider doing the same -- as a result of your conversations, your son knows that you will always be there to help him.

I'm planning on asking my sister-in-law (high school guidance counselor) for her opinion.

[newyawker99]

16. Hi Neurotica!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[RevolutionStartsNow]

9. I know suicide among teens is a huge problem...

and being the parent of a 14 year old emotional girl, I am not shocked. I also remember contemplating suicide at about 13.

But this is a 10 year old boy, not a teenager. To me this is a completely different thing, and I am stunned.

My 10 year old is smart, mature, happy, athletic, all those things, and many of the kids his age are very much the same. It's an age where they still seem to mostly like school, and where problems don't seem to plague them. I know there are exceptions, kids with rough home lives, kids who are excessively teased, etc., but for the most part a 10 year old seems pretty innocent. My son's best friend is going through his parent's very ugly divorce and he's for sure upset, but he also seems to just be rolling with it.

I have a hard time grasping how a 10 year old could feel that much despair. It just breaks my heart.

[seabeyond]

13. two years ago my son 9, smart, glasses, small, teased a lot....

bullied..... was talking to me one night letting it all out in gasps of air, sobs and pain,.... and at one point he yells.... i dont even know why i am on this planet

he has total security, love, acceptance of all he is, grace, so much. but the outside world was too much for him at that point and i could feel the pain emmitting from him. i was concerned. first and so far last time i thought, this kid will beat himself up within, not take it out on others. he is the one i need to be concerned with, with self destruction.

a lot of parents of the kids doing the bullying, had children that were carefree and athletic and all..... living a pretty content life.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

17. How is your son now?

What an awful thing to have to go through as a parent, I know I internalize all of my childrens' pain. My son's been pretty happy, but my daughter has for sure had her ups and downs, sobbing in pain and despair and just needing to be held.

I'm not sure that the bullies tend to come from the carefree homes. I've always thought the bullies were kids that were having troubles of their own at home and just taking it out on the weaker kids at school. The pattern I see is that the bullies are the less-smart kids, the ones who don't excel in the classroom and need to prove themselves another way.

[seabeyond]

22. he is much better now. we found a school environment being smart

is a good thing and NO tolerance to bullying. nice is embraced, expected and rewarded. and the teachers and administration is on it. suprisingly the greatest bullying came from kids private christian school. i think you are correct a lot of the bullying goes on with kids that feel crappy about themselves, probably being bullied themselves by adults, but that could happen in all kinds of manners. i see it in the richest of homes that are "appear" oh so blessed too. in this particular area i see boys being taught the "manliness" attitude thru the bushco, nuke em all, dem girlie man type attitude so there is a lot of room to bully the adult society is creating that isnt the norm bully we saw in the past.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

23. Glad you found him a good place

I tend to think that with the exception of the chemically-imbalanced or otherwise mentally impaired kids, bullies are made at home. My son has a friend whose Dad is a typical macho Repug type, lots of anti-Gay and anti-Arab slurs. The kid himself is generally a very sweet and caring kid, and his Mom is pretty good, but I can see his Dad's influence starting to have an effect, and it's very sad. If left alone, or taught correctly, this kid would not naturally become bigoted or a bully, but my guess is that his macho dad's attitude will be passed on to him and he will be just as intolerant.

[seabeyond]

25. this is my point. in the past you could point to the child

that was abused being the bully. today, it is this attitude that is creating otherwise non bullying kids to feel it is totally acceptable even manly behavior i agree

[zalinda]

19. I went through the same thing with my son

He is now 30 and said that I saved his life and maybe the lives of others. What I did was watch his moods closely, and made sure that I got him to talk about what was going on. The easiest way was to get him in the car and start driving, he couldn't leave so he'd talk. To this day, when we get in the car he starts talking about everything in his life.

My son would also he happy to email back and forth with your son. He knows what it's like and maybe he can help. My son also has ADD and Asperger's, so his social skills were nil. Just let me know if you want them to be in contact.

zalinda

[seabeyond]

24. what a wonderful story

and post zalinda. i tell son, once you get to adult, you are going to love life. he really is so beyond his kids in school, i tell him, he acts like an adult.... hence one of the issues the kids have with him. but it is and always has been him. i understand the add, that is son, not the hyper part. and i think a little autism is thrown in too.

i got the boys into a different school last year. this is their second year and it is the first year i am not having to drag them to school, and when i pick them up, they are happy. it is such a relief.

my son sounds a lot like your son. what he has going for him is he does feel and then express and we do that often. his grace. and you are right with the car. we drove the park in circles the other day because he was not done talking. and we explore all these feelings and pressure, seeing how workable they are. understanding there are always options. he is figuring out how to behave that allows him to be more part of the environment and still being true to self which is so important to him.

but..... your offer is a wonderful gift. back during that time i wanted him to have someone older that understood and could tell him things do get better. as i and you say, he is one i will watch closely.

[SheilaT]

10. From what has been posted,

I'm willing to believe it's possible it was a terrible accident. Unless he actually left a suicide note that hasn't been made public.

No matter what, it's a terrible tragedy, and it doesn't help to spread so outright a lie as that he died of natural causes. It's a sad truth, as several others have already posted, that even very young children can be suicidal, and the ready access to guns makes carrying it out all too easy.


Suicide has been described as permanent fix to a temporary problem, and that's so true. My heart goes out, especially to the parents. No one, but no one deserves to lose a child this way.

[DrunkenMaster]

11. our culture ignores suicide

and pretends it doesn't exist even when it occurs in public. Nearly twice as many people commit suicide in the US than are murdered every year and no one asks WHY.

[noonwitch]

15. So sad

poor child.


I can't believe parents keep loaded guns around where their kids can get them. I had a friend in high school who tried once to commit suicide by crashing a car. He survived that attempt, yet his parents, knowing he had already tried to kill himself, left a loaded handgun in the house. He used it to kill himself.

His dad was a hunter, he had a bunch of hunting rifles and ammo that he kept locked up in a secure cabinet, but he kept his handgun in a drawer in the kitchen, loaded and ready.

I don't know about everyone else, but if I had a teenager who I knew was suicidal living in my home, I think I would put all the guns into a temporary storage facility and go get them when it was hunting time again. I would also put a lock on the medicine cabinet and the cabinet where all the cleaning compounds are stored. I wouldn't leave him alone unless I was sure he was not suicidal anymore.

That said, if I were a parent of a teenaged boy who preferred to sing in the school musicals to playing football, I probably wouldn't have driven him to suicide by constantly pressuring him to be something he wasn't cut out to be.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

18. What about the counselors? What were they thinking?

I don't know where these counselors came from, but I am just appalled (as was the director of the afterschool program, once they finished) that they soft-shoed this for the kids.

I can understand a parent trying to protect a younger kid from the truth and making up a story about it being "natural causes" or something else, but these are trained counselors, I assume -- why would they do this? This was actually what I was most upset about when I wrote the first post.

[Horse with no Name]

20. How tragic

When I worked at a Children's Hospital, we had a very young child (my fuzzy brain is checking in this morning). The child was either 3 or 5.
She drowned herself in the bathtub. I forget the specifics, but it was a proven suicide.
It was her 3rd hospital documented attempt at suicide.

[earth mom]

21. This is the reason I feel more kids would benefit from homeschool!

There is just too much pressure on kids these days. They are expected to be perfect, to be popular, to succeed academically and athletically. The peer pressure alone is horrific and the pressure of it all is just too intense for most, if not all, kids to handle. The kids who don't match the ridiculous standards-not smart enough, not popular enough, not atheletic enough-are mercilessly teased and who then contemplate suicide the most. :cry:

What I don't understand is why parents would keep their kids in an environment that is not a mentally healthy one in the first place? IMO, our kids should come FIRST-before any job, money, personal goals or dreams! But NO-we are such a selfish and superficial society that most parents let themselves be pressured into the idea that going to school is SO much better for their kids. Parents are told: "just think of the academic, social and the athletic opportunities!" Except those are the very things that make most schools hell on earth for far too many kids! :banghead:

[SmokingJacket]

27. I'm not sure how you talk to a ten-year-old about suicide.

My son is nine -- I don't want him to even *begin* to think that this is something kids can do.

But how much WORSE to say it was "natural"? No sudden death of a ten-year-old is natural -- and now the kids are lying in bed at night freaking out that they could "naturally" just die.

Seems obvious to me that the best way to explain it is that the kid had a gun, and either it went off accidentally or on purpose, but that no one can really know what another person is thinking, and how much better it would have been if he'd left the gun alone. And maybe go over some scenarios with him about what he'd do if he had a problem he didn't think he could solve.

BTW -- it is probably on your son's mind *a lot.* I had a friend whose brother was killed by a gun when I was that age, and it was a big deal, even though I didn't know the kid personally. Most kids are only barely aware that other kids CAN die.

[Beaverhausen]

28. Anyone know if this poor child was on ritalin or any other drugs?

just wondering...

[fed-up]

30. Not all 10 years realize that death is permanant-your son and all kids

need to understand that no matter if the child's death was an accident or suicide that it is permanant and that he will not "come back to life" like many cartoon/movie/video characters do.

Do not hide the truth from them.

Kids need to be told that at times they may think they have insurmountable problems, but that given time, things will work out. Explain that there is help out there for people that are going through tough times. Sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right counselor and/or medications, but if someone is feeling that depressed they need to keep trying.

My son's father committed suicide (was a manic depressive that stopped meds abruptly) when son was 14. My son hadn't seen his father in 12 years, so it wasn't that upsetting to him.

I have gone over what he should do if he ever feels that hopeless about things and what the signs/symptoms of major depression are in case he inherited any genetic tendancies.

[annabanana]

34. Take your cues from him. .

and watch for changes in habits. Don't make him confront the situation if he doesn't want to. You may be able to gauge how well he's handling it from a side-long view. Don't lie to him about it. Let him know that the boy was sick and didn't know how to ask for help.

It was irresponsible for the school counselors to put out a falsehood. I would check their credentials.