PARENTS MUST HELP CHILDREN
WE’RE failing our children. Home and school should be the safest places for kids, yet these institutions can be sources of discontent or are at a loss in dealing with bad behaviour or mental health problems.
Today the Bulletin reveals that short-term suspensions from schools on the Gold Coast have risen
16 per cent over the past year. Experts say that at the same time, there has been a general decline in adolescent mental health, with one psychologist saying one in four teens has issues.
How schools handle these problems is clouded by bureaucratic jargon. When the Department of Education was contacted, the response was couched in terms like “graduated and measured responses’’, “responsible behaviour plan’’ and “we support principals in taking strong disciplinary action where a student’s behaviour is unacceptable’’.
Of course, most in the community support schools in using strong measures when students go well beyond the bounds of what is acceptable. Violent, bullying behaviour, for example, is never acceptable.
But it is difficult for the wider public to know whether the department and schools are handling these daily crises effectively. There has to be transparency, otherwise the community can never be really sure that principals and top-level education bureaucrats know what they’re doing. Discipline is not a matter of one size fits all, and mental health issues throw any number of wildcard factors into the mix.
Psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg says kids are now subjected to more marital breakups, online hazards and cyber bullying, along with physical growth outstripping psychological development. Other factors like domestic violence, sexual and emotional abuse, drugs and – a big one – a mountain of pressure from the education system and society’s expectations of what success should be have put our kids under the pump.
Parents have to take responsibility and show their kids they support them, no matter what. They have to put their children first. That will not necessarily solve the entire problem in our schools, but it could go a long way in helping this generation of teens survive.