#5 – You let your kid think being different is wrong.

Take a few seconds and watch at least a portion of the video below… go ahead… I’ll wait…

That video was originally posted about four months ago, and the kid in it was found dead in his parent’s house on Monday.  He killed himself.  His parents were quoted as saying, “It didn’t actually get better for him, he just got better at hiding it.” 

I grew up in a small town that was, more or less, pretty much dominated by Caucasians.  Not a lot of cultural, religious, or ethnical diversity (that I was aware of anyway).  And despite this, from my perspective, it wasn’t all that bad.  I was a fat kid and so I got made fun of for that, but I was also pretty quick with the comebacks and was able to zero in on my assaulters insecurities, so if all they had to hit me with was fat jokes then they were in for it because I was prepared to strip a layer off of them.  So I didn’t get picked on a lot, unless I pissed someone off and all they had was the go-to fat joke.  I was an arts nerd, I gave up the football team to do drama, and I got harassed a bit, but I also didn’t give a shit since my drama friends were pretty damn awesome.  So what makes me saddest when I hear about a kid like that is that they, clearly, didn’t have much of a support group.  Who knows what their home situation was like.  If you do a quick search for “It gets better” on youtube you’ll notice that there is a massive campaign, loaded with celebrities sharing messages as well as regular people.  The other thing you’ll notice is how in the comments section you still get haters saying the most terrible things you can imagine to another human being.  So it’s not enough for these people to get picked on just for being who they are, but they also have to deal with cyber bullies lurking in the shadows. 

So here’s the thing – if you’ve got a kid, at any age, it’s your moral responsibility to teach them that it’s okay for people to be different, act differently, have different views and opinions, and want different things.  I think that one of the worst things that human beings do is hate people for absolutely no reason other than they exist.  I don’t understand the purpose of people protesting gay marriage – as if it existing makes any difference whatsoever in the protestors lives – as if it hurts them in any way.  It’s one of those things that really really bothers me to no end.  But the most amazing thing about all this hate, all this injustice, is that, because it’s so stupid and pointless, it’s the easiest thing in the world to wipe away if we just try.  If we just make a conscious effort to let our children know that it’s okay for individuals to be individuals.  Hate is not genetic – it is a learned trait.  And it could be wiped out in a single generation if people put forth the effort. 

I don’t really have a strong call-to-action here outside of just to ask people to be better.  If you’ve got a son and he wants to play with what you think to be “girl’s toys” or he wants the “pink one” of something – go for it, likewise with the girls.  Don’t teach kids about limitation, that this is for girls, and that’s for boys – instead let them just discover the world for themselves without enforcing your beliefs onto them.

And if you yourself harbor any hatred towards any one group of people, just take a hard look at why, and does it matter?  And why you can’t just stop and move on?  Is it really worth your energy?