Most tragedies that happen in life are not so easy to untangle as we look for answers that will explain behaviors that confound us. The truth usually lies somewhere in a complex gordian knot that makes it almost impossible for us to ever fully understand how things went so wrong.
As a teacher I often encountered students with severe behavioral problems. Sometimes they were violent and frightening. It was easiest just to write them off as thugs, bad individuals in need of punishments for their harmful actions. Whenever I took the time to learn more about them I almost always saw that they were not born that way nor did they suddenly choose to be that way. Their journey to ugliness resulted from a complex series of issues that ultimately led to their angry bravado.
The first time I encountered such an individual I was teaching fourth grade in a low income neighborhood. Some of my students were homeless, living in family cars or bunking down in a relative’s garage. The young man who caught my attention decided to threaten his fellow students with a pair of scissors in the bathroom. A frightened boy begged me to intercede and so I raced to the area to find the boy with the scissors sitting alone near the urinals with the point of the implement pointed to his jugular vein. He threatened to jam the blade into his throat if I came near him. Instead I sat down on the nasty floor and spoke softly to him, attempting to calm his fear and anger. I slowly inched closer and closer to him until our shoulders touched each other. When I asked for permission to hug him, he began to cry and lowered his weapon. That’s when I grabbed him in a bear hug sobbing along with him. He dropped the scissors to the ground and I retrieved them.
I later learned that the boy had been set on fire by his mother when he was only three years old. The trauma of that event had left him scarred both physically and emotionally. From time to time something would trigger him and he would become violent in a kind of response to the fear that still lived inside his mind. He was hospitalized after the episode in the bathroom but would never come back to our school. I have always worried and about him and wondered how he is doing. Part of me feared that he was never able to control the demons that I saw in his actions that day. Another part of me hopes that he got the help he needed and continued on with a fulfilling life.
I could recount story after story of broken souls who experienced horrors in their childhood that not even healthy adults would be able to overcome without longterm therapy. There was the young man who witnessed his father killing his mother. There was a boy whose mom worked as a prostitute at night leaving him to watch his little sister. When his sibling was raped by a neighbor the mother blamed the twelve year old boy for what had happened. All of the lost souls that I witnessed had horrific stories that would never be easy to unravel and turn into the kind of normal outcomes that most of us experience in healthy and loving homes. Without extended and compassionate care most of them seemed to be doomed to difficult and often violent lives.
We would do well to invest far more time and money into helping such youngsters while they are still young and a bit more malleable rather than waiting until they are overtly committing crimes and mayhem as teenagers or adults. The longer we take to address the issues, the more damage is done done making it quite difficult to bring about the changes needed for them to live normal lives in our society. They grow into mass shooters, thieves, murders, angry and dangerous souls.
I do not believe in overlooking the crimes of such people. They definitely must be addressed and just punishments must be administered, but my idea is to catch them earlier in the developmental process. We should be able to provide them with the counseling and emotional support that they need to reverse the negative trajectory of their lives. This is especially true for noticing those who are bullied and finding out who is bullying them. The child constantly sitting alone should never just be ignored. The individual hiding behind dark clothing may be visually expressing pain. The girl who wears long sleeved sweaters in the heat of summer might be hiding the scars that she has inflicted on herself from constant cutting.
It is often easiest to look the other way when it is apparent that a young person is suffering. We don’t have to be invasive but we need to be observant enough to notice changes in the ways they act, suddenly lower grades, avoidance of other people. We should never just assume that it’s just the way that person is. There are almost always very clear signs that someone is in a state of distress if only we take the time to watch for such things.
Not all of the souls for whom I interceded over the years have turned out well, but a great number of them have and they still communicate to me how important my care and concern was in helping them to feel confident and healthy. The young are a treasure, a valuable resource for the future of society. It is up to all of us to really see them and hear them and care about them before they become tragic statistics. Nothing feels worse than remembering the signs of distress that we did nothing about. We can make a difference and we should always be willing to try.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 