Will This Be the Day My Daughter Dies?

What Bullying and Depression Do

Is today the day I will find my daughter’s body? This is a daily thought for me. Is it a persistent worry? Yes! But I do everything I can to keep the panic and fear at a realistic level. My daughter suffers from PTSD, depression, and anxiety. She was 15 when she was diagnosed. That was three years ago.

In the last three years, I have seen a beautiful, smart, and outgoing girl turn into a reclusive and introverted young woman. Suicide is a thought she entertains on a daily basis. Depression is a devastating illness that wreaks havoc on not only the person suffering, but on the entire family. The dynamics of our entire family changed on a dime.

Shocking Bulling Statistics 2014

Bullying Statistics 2014: Lasting Effects of CyberBullying

Most experts agree that bullying peaks in middle school, while children are making the transition from children to young adults. Although bullying certainly continues into high school – and even into adulthood, unfortunately – it does seem to subside with maturity. Even so, approximately 160,000 teens reportedly skip school every day because they are bullied, and 1 in 10 teens drops out of school due to repeated bullying.

83 percent of girls, and 79 percent of boys report being bullied either in school or online.
75 percent of school shootings have been linked to harassment and bullying against the shooter.
Not shockingly, students who are bullies as young adults continue the trend of abuse and violence into adulthood. By the age of 30, approximately 40 percent of boys who were identified as bullies in middle- and high school had been arrested three or more times.
NoBullying.com

My Daughter’s Story

I watched an excited girl transition from middle school to high school. Then I watched that straight A student implode. She was everything a parent could want their daughter to be. She was kind and compassionate. She was the student who would stand up to a bully and defend the victim. She was independent and self-confident, driven. Homework was always done and with exceptional effort. She was an active engaged learner. Teachers loved having her in class. She had more “friends” than I could count.

If there was ever a perfect storm, it was this. Our daughter was physically abused by an older child. While the abuse stopped years before, high school was the turning point. Now it has left our family devastated. The summer before high school, a male friend of my daughter’s, budding athlete, tried unsuccessfully to sexually assault her. This was a trigger for PTSD. When our daughter entered high school, she walked away from a peer group that had very different principles than she did. Bullying began. Two back-to-back serious illnesses took her from school for more than 60 days in her freshman year.

Rumors ran wild. Some were so ridiculous that we couldn’t believe they would bother her, but they did. A fifteen-year-old girl having a “boob job” was at the top of that list. When illness takes a 5’10” tall girl down to 92 lbs. some things just stand out. One day, she went into a choir room (that is used two periods each day) to retrieve a book she had left there the day before. Inside was a hand written list of the top ten reasons she should kill herself. After class another day, she returned to her locker to find a five-foot long penis drawn on it. By March, she approached a “friend” in the cafeteria. He jumped backward as if afraid of her touching him. Many peers saw this. From that day forward, my daughter ate lunch in the social workers’ office, alone and isolated. The blessing was that at least once a week, her principal at the all freshman building, would eat with her. He began to check in on her daily. He is the greatest educator I have ever met. If I spend my whole life teaching, I do not know if I will ever have that kind of effect on a child, let alone every child who comes through his door.

By May we were counting down the days until the end of the school year. After school one day, my daughter was waiting for me. The bus was a place we weren’t even going to consider. Boys from another school were passing her on their way into the building for a sports event. She was sitting on the floor outside of the office, doing homework, with a clear view to see when I arrived. These boys were loud on their way into the building. A few minutes later when they returned outside, they stopped to harass my daughter. Eight boys, all telling my daughter what sexual acts they would like her to perform. Eight boys, all were rubbing themselves and mimicking masturbation. I have to say the boys’ coach was useless, but their school district and building administrators handled the situation within twenty-four hours. Administrators at our school were very satisfied with how the discipline was handled. We never knew what was done. Those boys have a right to privacy, which prevents us from knowing. I never filed charges. Teenage boys will do stupid things. We want them to learn, not have to explain it for the rest of their lives.

We discussed taking finals early. My daughter was determined to reach the finish line. At the semester, we had her moved out of her all honors schedule. She was in regular classes, and respectable grades. (read complete article)