Sticks and stones
may break my bones
but words will never hurt me

I’ve been thinking about the MTM suicide case. In short, an adult woman made a myspace account impersonating a teenage boy, and used it to initially flirt with and then dump a teenage girl who had a less-than-stellar relationship with the woman’s daughter. The teenage girl then committed suicide, and the woman is now being charged in the case.

Ignoring for a moment the horrible tragedy which has occurred and the horrible case law being created, there is the simple issue of how young people deal with verbal abuse. I can’t remember how many times I was told as a child to simply “brush it off” because “words can’t hurt you”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a parental axiom that was as patently false as that one. Words clearly hurt, both children and adults, and it doesn’t take a tragic suicide to prove it. Rather than trying to teach the obvious falsehood that verbal assaults do not lead to mental anguish, we should be teaching children how to deal with verbal assaults and the ensuing mental anguish. Denying simple reality does nothing to help them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 4:01 pm by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.