Suicide Essay Post

“Cultural dynamics of perfectionism and overindulgence have now combined to create adolescents who are ultra-focused on success but don’t know how to fail.”

I like the description of parents going from ‘helicopter parenting’ to ‘lawn mower parenting’.  With my own family, I see these same things.  I am the oldest, and was raised to be autonomous.  I left my parent’s house at 17.  My much younger siblings lived with my parents into their 30s, even after finding spouses.  My younger siblings never really went to college, and I completely overdid.  (This is my second masters degree.)

Like most Alaskans, I am too familiar with suicide.  I do not think we are thinking enough about how we are talking to young people.  Every day I hear about how there are so many more diagnoses these days, and how that is a problem.  I hear a portion of the population make fun of ‘snowflakes’ and ‘safe spaces’.  And there are kids like DeWitt.  Made fun of for needing a safe space, at very least by my racist uncle who thinks we should pull out of the UN and that Roy Moore basically the Kool-Aid Man in a cowboy hat.

The fact that there are names for behaviors such as Penn Face or Duck Syndrome makes me very sad, and I see it in some of the students I am working with right now.