You may find the following article of interest. It is about the suicide death of a co-workers son.
If We Only Knew, If He Only Told Us
Life for us will never be the same as it was before Oct. 7, 2003 . There are no words to describe the shock and horror of finding your 13-year-old son dead from suicide just as another typical school day was suppose to begin.
Our son Ryan was a sweet, gentle and very sensitive soul. He was born in Poughkeepsie , NY just a week before Christmas. That Christmas, Ryan, by far, was the best present of all. As he grew, his affectionate way made it addicting to want to hug him all the time and feel him hug you back. He had the magic of bringing a smile to anyone that looked his way. As he grew, he developed a wonderful sense of humor too. And when we moved into new neighborhoods twice during his life, kids quickly gravitated to his warmth and friendliness.
But there were early concerns with Ryan’s speech, language and motor skills development as he neared kindergarten. Ryan received special ed services from pre-school through the fourth grade. We will always be grateful for the entire staff at Hiawatha Elementary School in Essex Junction for being so wonderful and caring for our son. They did so much for him and the school did a wonderful job making sure special needs kids were not bullied by others. By the time he reached the fifth grade, he was assessed to be on grade and no longer needing special ed services. But as he became older, he also became more aware that he was not as book smart as most of his classmates. This bothered him deeply. He had to work much harder at homework, re-reading assignments several times to comprehend the material. He was hard on himself, no matter how much we tried to lessen the academic pressure and remind him of his other strengths.
It was during the fifth grade that we first began to encounter the bullying problem. A few kids picked up on Ryan’s academic weaknesses and his poor physical coordination. But since he was not physically bullied, we advised him to just ignore them, walk away and remember that he had good friends to count on. We even went so far as to get him professional therapy to further help him develop coping skills and to boost his self-esteem. By the end of that school year, he seemed fine and, on the therapist’s advice, stopped the sessions.
Ryan’s middle school, Albert D. Lawton (ADL) in Essex Junction, VT had grades 6 through 8 in the same building. It was a bigger school, more kids and for most making this transition … pretty scary. It was especially intimidating going to a school with “big” 8th graders lurking the hallways. The bullying problem resurfaced on and off during his first middle school year, but never to a point that gave us great concern. Again, we had the conventional belief that this was just kids being kids, a part of growing up ... that encountering mean kids in middle school was just inevitable.
Things started to get tougher for him during the 7th grade. As with his early school years, Ryan still struggled to make average grades. School still was not easy for him and he often brought up the concern of being put back in “sped” (special ed.) It was during this school year that he also took a lot of interest in computers and computer games. He received his first computer along with the house rules for its proper use:
- No chatting/IMing with strangers
- No giving out personal information
- No posting your picture at a website
- No secret passwords from his parents on e-mail and im accounts (for safety sake in case he disappeared one day, we wanted instant access to e-mail and any other accounts.)
Since Ryan was never a discipline problem and hung out with a bunch of very nice kids, we never had a concern with him not sticking to the rules or misbehaving on-line. We later learned this was naïve thinking and that we really didn’t cover all of the internet safety bases. Cyber bullying never even crossed our minds. Our list of rules was woefully inadequate.
In December 2002, the bullying problem surfaced again to a significant level. Because of a few kids that were tormenting him, he hated going to school and often cried about it at the kitchen table. You can’t imagine the sense of helplessness a parent feels in this situation – torn between wanting to be his bodyguard all day and feeling he needed to (again) learn how to manage the situation as a part of growing up. But things were just not going well. We sat at the kitchen table discussing our options one evening that December. I said, “That’s it Ryan, let’s take it to the principal and have him put a stop to it once and for all.” To that, Ryan exclaimed, “No dad, please don’t do that. He'll only make it worse. I see it happen all the time.” Instead Ryan asked that we help him learn how to fight so he can “beat the heck" out of this kid if he and his 8th grade friends tried to jump Ryan. How I wish I could now turn back the clock . I wish we instead looked into why Ryan did not trust his school administration to address the problem in the first place.
What we discovered after his death is that, in our opinion, the school had a very poorly conceived process that seemed rather ad hoc - I was told that they would initially have brought the two boys into the office and have them work it out ... as if bullying just require some simple conflict resolution. I said no wonder they had no idea how bad the bullying really was in the school - would a middle school child really step forward with that kind of help offered? I expressed that the minute they walk out the door, the kid will be called a baby and bullied even worse. I later learned from other parents that often another option employed at was to change the victim's classes so that the two are separated throughout the school day. Why isn't the bully's school schedule changed instead? Clearly, this further makes the victim feel that they just can't handle themselves and, therefore, something must be wrong with them. I feel bullying is basically terrorism. This is not about conflict resolution. There is nothing to work out or negotiate. The terrorist needs to be isolated and disciplined without involving the victim until much later on if an heartfelt apology was in the offering. And when a staff member observes emotional bullying, they should not wait for the victim to complain before doing something. Many students have told me that too many times an adult will look the other way when it’s “just words” and not punches.
That Christmas of 2002, we bought Ryan the “Taebo” kick boxing video tape, gloves and the punching bag trainer. All through the month of January and into February, I worked with him on this program. I was quite proud of him, seeing his self confidence build. It felt like the "Karate Kid" movie, getting him ready for the big match. But I reminded Ryan that he was to never start a fight with this kid, but he certainly had my permission to “whale on him” the minute he laid a hand on Ryan.
Sure enough, we got a call from the assistant principal after a school day in February 2003 that he just broke up a fight between Ryan and the bully at the nearby Maple Street Park in our village. He said Ryan was ok but wanted us to be aware. We were very grateful for his intervention. When we found Ryan walking home, he was both scared and elated. He was shaking but said he got a few good punches in and felt good he was able to hold his own. He said that kid probably won’t mess with him anymore. We were all feeling pretty relieved that day for Ryan; for not being seriously hurt and for seemingly making it through a typical teenage rite of passage.
As the months followed, he seemed to be doing great. He was still struggling academically, but that was always the case for Ryan since kindergarten. He acted out like a typical middle school age kid – moody at times but also very sweet and funny most of the time. The "normal" ups and downs were what we observed. And we were always there for him, always reminding him how much we loved him.
I often told Ryan that there were all kinds of intelligence – like academic, music, physical and social intelligence. I always felt his strength was social intelligence- that his very warm, sweet, caring and sensitive personality would take him far in life because people liked being with him. I often joked with him that I knew plenty of people who are so called brilliant, having graduated from the best colleges but basically had sand paper for personalities that most people could barely stand. One of the best compliments we ever received about Ryan was from a parent that said they loved having Ryan over, hoping his sweetness would rub off onto their child.
It was during the second half of 7th grade that we learned after his death that we really only knew what he was willing to share with us. We did know Ryan had befriended the bully soon after the fight in the park. And we warned him to watch his back since this kid was his nemesis for so long. The following is what we learned after his death when I logged onto his AOL account a week after his death and was approached by a classmate on-line that wanted me to know something. This classmate went on to describe how Ryan had shared something very personal with the bully – a very personal detail about a medical exam he received in the fall that school year because my wife thought he was having an appendicitis and rushed him to the emergency room..
We'll never know why Ryan decided to share this aspect of his emergency room exam. But knowing his sense of humor, we are sure he thought it was a funny story to tell someone. This is the kind of story he would have fun telling and enjoy making people laugh. But it went wrong for him in a big way. The bully ran with the story and spread a rumor around the school that Ryan liked what was done to him by the doctor and therefore Ryan must be gay. According to other students that later corroborated the story, this was spread on-line as well through IM and chat.
One kid described a scene at the school as being a feeding frenzy. Throughout the school day, Ryan was ridiculed and humiliated by many, even by kids that don’t normally bully. His friends tried to console him but he just pushed them away … often running into the bathroom between classes to hide his upset and try to collect himself. According to another student, two teachers asked him what was wrong. We never got a call from the school that this happened. Ryan never told us.
When I questioned his school’s policy/procedure for notifying the parents about a child being visibly upset at school, I got a long answer in response that basically said “we assess the student’s upset within the context of the situation and make a judgment call on whether to contact the parents.” I rewrote it to state “Whenever you find a student visibly upset, regardless of the stated reasons, notify the parents or guardians.” This was a missed opportunity to know and deal with a very traumatic event in our son’s life. Too often we let these homophobic, sexual harassment acts of gay and non-gay students happen in middle schools and it’s just considered kids being kids. Homophobic language and taunting is far too readily accepted or ignored among this age group. The adults in the school system need to enforce the sexual harassment policy required by our state law.
This event happened towards the very end of the 7th grade school year. Knowing my son, he was probably too embarrassed to tell his parents what had happened, especially since it started with him telling too much about his emergency room exam. Instead, he kept the hurt inside and spent a lot of time in his room that summer on his computer. It was a rainy summer that year in Vermont, so it was hard to discern that this was a sign of a problem. There often were days that summer when there was not a whole lot to do outside. Playing computer games and chatting with friends all day on-line seemed like normal behavior for young teens today. However, as we got closer to the new school year, we expressed our concern with what seemed like excessive time being spent on-line. We reminded him of the rules and he assured us he was only chatting with friends.
We did not think of asking him to tell us all of the names of the kids he was IMing with on-line. We only asked him if any were people that he did not know in person. How I wish we probed deeper, because after his death, I found IM exchanges with every young person he chatted with since the end of July 2003 to just a few days before his death. I discovered that Ryan was friends with a kid we never met in person, nor knew he was friends with that seemed to be very dark. The two of them questioned the worthiness of life. This young man fed into Ryan’s suicidal ideation his own macabre thoughts and encouragement. There was a short exchange between the two of them just two weeks prior to Ryan’s suicide - “Tonight’s the night, I think I’m going to do it. You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow." And the other kid replied, “It’s about fucking time!” You cannot imagine the rage that filled up inside of me when I read this. When I uncovered his true identity and met with his parents, I concluded that the parents lost parental control of their son both on and off line. This was one relationship that ended up being poison that only worsened Ryan’s depressed state of mind.
There was also evidence of cyber bullying by someone continuing the "gay" taunting that happened at school. This young boy kept coming onto Ryan, telling him how he wanted to do sexual things to him. Rather than just disengage, Ryan tried to figure out who this boy was by asking questions like - what school do you go to? Do you hang out at the teen center? Which grade are you in? Ryan tried hard, but was unsuccessful in trapping the kid in divulging his true identity. He should have just shut down the IM window and told us. I can't imagine the hurt and pain he kept bottled up instead.
We also learned that one of the popular girls pretended to like Ryan on-line for whom Ryan had an obvious crush on during the summer. (I found other conversations where he told another boy how he loved seeing her at the village pool.) This girl shared IM conversations between them with others that embarrassed and humiliated him. She later told him she would never want anything to do with such a loser. He told her it was girls like her that made him want to kill himself.
During the first month of school, we often asked Ryan how school was going. We often got a short “fine.” We asked every night if he had his homework done and he said yes. We reminded him of our deal made before school started that the computer in his room would be taken away if his IMing during the evening showed a significant negative impact on his progress report.
A week before his progress report came; he came to me tearful, telling me that it was not going to be good. He said I would be so disappointed in him. During that conversation, he said he was just a loser and that he would never amount to anything … and asked, “What is the sense of living?” I tearfully hugged him and told him how proud I was that he had the courage and maturity to warn me ahead of time about his progress report. I reminded him how much I loved him and that being book smart was not the most important kind of intelligence.
I told him that I recalled feeling pretty down on myself at times when I was a young person, sometimes doubtful of my own ability to make it in life. I confessed that I too had thoughts of ending it all at these low points to escape the pain at the time. But I told him, “Look how much happiness I would have missed out on. How I would have never experienced the joy and love of my own family and all the great times we’ve had together.” I asked him to promise me that he would never feel that desperate and do what he was thinking without coming to me first to talk about his feelings. I told him, “My heart would be broken into a million pieces.” We sobbed together for awhile, just holding each other. After pulling ourselves together, we discussed how we would just wait for the progress report and then develop a plan to work together in my home office to get him back on track. I said, “Damn it Ryan (with a smile), I’m not going to let you fail the 8th grade!” We both laughed and hugged one more time.
I thought everything was fine again after our talk. How I wish I had probed deeper that evening. How I wish I had simply asked him, “Ryan, do you have a plan for suicide? Have you attempted already?” How I wish I was made more aware of the real risk of teen suicide. No one ever talks about teenage depression and suicide openly. Society would much prefer you to believe that this only happens in real “screwed up” families. My brain immediately blocked it out as a real possibility in my own family. Why would he? His life isn't bad enough I thought to myself. Sure he’s was upset, but I just gave him a great pep talk and reaffirmed my love for him. At the time, I thought the only issue was the poor progress report that was coming soon. And when it came, we did not over react. I calmly reminded him about the computer privilege deal we had and disabled it that Saturday. And we subsequently mapped out a plan for the rest of the school year.
Another discovery after Ryan's death was that he was treated very abrasively by one of his eighth grade teachers too. On Ryan's last night, there was one thing he did last that evening that led us to probe deeper into this area as well. He was frantic around 10 pm, calling a friend to find out the homework in a particular class. He had forgotten to write down the assignment, discovering this too late after struggling for a few hours with his math homework. We asked other parents of students in that class to find out from their children how this teacher treated Ryan. One of them, an honor student, said that he was one of the poor performing students that she would often humiliate in front of the class for being slow to answer or for missing a homework assignment. Another student also added that one day, her treatment of him was so bad that they both almost went to the principle but fear of retaliation stopped them. To us, this was certainly another contributing factor to my son's depression. I met with the principal and the superintendent about this discovery too. We had an in depth discussion about the Vermont Teacher's license requirement to maintain a respectful class environment and that adult bullying of a student should be grounds for dismissal. There is a difference between being a strict and demanding teacher versus being a bully. Teachers need to be more aware of the signs of depression and not be so quick to judge that a child is just slacking off. Using bullying tactics such as ridiculing, humiliating or intimidating should be grounds for suspension and even dismissal.
Now we want to be very clear. We do not blame Ryan’s suicide on one single person or one single event. In the end, Ryan was suffering from depression. This is a form of mental illness that is brought on by biological and/or environmental factors. In Ryan's case, we feel it was the "pile on effect" of the environmental issues mentioned above that stemmed from his middle school life. Tragically, teenage depression often goes undetected against the backdrop of typical teen angst. And since most of us have never received basic education in the signs and prevention of teenage suicide at any point in our lives, young people suffering are at greater risk. We have no doubt that bullying and cyber bullying were significant environmental factors that triggered Ryan’s depression. In the final analysis, we feel strongly that Ryan's middle school was a toxic environment, like so many other middle schools across the country for so many other young people. For too long, we have let kids (and adults) be cruel to kids as a right of passage into adulthood inside a building that was suppose to be not only physically safe, but emotionally safe as well.
We place accountable for this tragedy, first and foremost, on ourselves as his parents... but also on Ryan’s school administration, staff and the young people involved. As parents, we failed to hold the school accountable to maintain an emotionally safe environment for our son while he was alive. But accountability and responsibility should be shared by all involved - parents, bullies, bystanders, teachers and school administrators ... basically the whole system. Something had to happen in response to this tragedy. It had to be something substantial and sustained, not just a short lived sympathetic response.
We decided to take all this intense pain and channel it into productive areas to help other young people avoid the same fate as our son. You’ll learn on the other pages about the new law we got passed in Vermont that hold schools much more accountable in preventing and responding to bullying. We also worked closely with I-Safe America to raise awareness about cyber bullying and the severe emotional impact it can have on a young person. We've done several national and local news media interviews to spread this story. And we continue to collaborate with various suicide prevention groups to drive into our Vermont schools more education about depression and suicide prevention among middle school and high school students. We can't fix our past but with your help, we can fix the future.
Nothing can ever bring back our Ryan. Nothing will ever heal our broken hearts. But we hope by sharing the personal details of our tremendous loss, another family will have been spared a lifelong sentence to this kind of pain.
Please never forget Ryan's story and the fragility of adolescence.