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February 23, 2005
Educate the Parents, Not the Children
Michelle Malkin has an article up today about cutting, or self-mutilation. She even has a link up to "National Self Injury Awareness Day" and says “If your kids' schools aren't on top of this, they should be.” I may be wrong, but she seems to be implying that it’s a good idea to educate the kids about this, just like we educate them about drugs, sex, anorexia, and a multitude of other problems. I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with her on this issue.
Self-mutilation is certainly a serious issue. I personally have had three relatives who, at one time or another, and for various reasons, have done it. I definitely think that parents should be well educated about it, just as they should be well educated about any problems that their children might face. However, I think educating kids that do not yet have a problem with this behavior is a very bad idea.
First of all, this is a relatively uncommon problem (although still more common than most would think) and children normally do not start it because of pressure from their peers, as is often the case with sex and alcohol. If you start teaching kids about it and it becomes a popularly known thing, then it gradually starts to be accepted. Eventually certain groups of kids start to think it is “cool.” This very well could lead to peer pressure related to this behavior to become more common.
It’s all well and good to educate kids about problems that their peers might be experiencing so that they can be more understanding. However, children do not yet have developed ethical systems. They don’t consider the future or the more distant consequences of their actions. They do not need to know about every single thing that might affect them, and they don't need to lose all of their innocence about the world. As far as a child who is experiencing a problem like this, her peers simply don’t need to know about it. Support and understanding of problems like this are better done by parents and other adults who are mature, loving, and stable enough to handle the knowledge.
Second of all, if the education includes all of the reasons why people do it, such as the fact that it releases endorphins and relieves emotional pain, this might cause a kid who normally wouldn’t do it, or might start doing it later to think, “hmmm, I’m feeling some pain. Why not cut?”
A somewhat common example would be anorexia. Years ago when it finally became accepted as a disease, you started seeing programs aimed at educating children, not to mention all of those “movies of the week.” Now there are innumerable chat rooms and webpages for people who are, or want to be anorexic. I’ve been to some of them before, and it certainly seems that there are kids there who do not have anorexia, but are using the behavior to lose weight or attract attention. The anorexia boards provide a support group and a how-to to these kids who might otherwise not have a problem with this behavior. Certainly there would still be some of these webpages if the education of kids on this topic had not been done, but I would not expect to see so much of them, especially not so many of the ones devoted to glorifying the disease.
Parents, teachers, and other people that deal with children regularly need to be educated about these problems so that they can recognize the warning signs and get the child help early. But I do not think that heavy education of every child on this topic and other similar ones is a good idea.
Secure Liberty and The Llama Butchers both point out the main reason kids do this is because they are looking for attention. All the more reason to educate parents and teachers.
Posted by illuminaria at February 23, 2005 01:11 PM