DANGEROUS SITUATION HELP!

AndyT
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Fri Nov 19, 2010 2:35 pm

I'm blown away. We just found out that the Principal of the local school knew about some dangerous behavior and chose not to notify the parents. She felt that the school could handle it.

I'm talking about EMO. Its a new fad thats going around. Emotional Miserable On (the dark side). It's Emotional Mental Ostracism. It's a mental condition where people begin to hurt themselves. They cut themselves and do great damage to themselves, even to the point of death.

It turns out that there are videos on YouTube on just how to do this to yourself. How to cut yourself, even down to ways to dress to hide what you are doing. If you type in "emo" on YouTube, the number 1 video listed 'How to be EMO' has 21.7 MILLION views! Our kids are watching this stuff and nobody thought it was important enough to let the parents know.

I'll be making complaints to the School Board here locally, and trying to get the news people involved. What can be done about this? It's out right promotion of self-hatred, self-abuse and probably other things I'm not qualified to judge. I'm sure a Psychologist would have a laundry list of things wrong with these videos.

What can I do? I can't search out every emo video on YouTube on my own. I can't even find a way to contact YouTube and let them know about this. They've made it nearly impossible to get in touch with them.

I'm asking for help. What ever you can do to help stamp out this sickness, please do it. And post your ideas here on getting this problem into the light.

Thank You.


BigBear
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Fri Nov 19, 2010 3:15 pm

Andy- just like every risky behavior that kids (or anyone else) get in to; education and exposure are the keys. Think about all the causes we have made real progress with:

Bullying
Drugs
Smoking
Teen pregnancy
Eating disorders
AIDs awareness and prevention
LGT issues and tolerance
and many others...

If you want to make a difference you have to get involved with the kids. Become a speaker or find a good speaker and develop a slide or video show. Force the School Board to not only allow this subject to be actively discussed but also to provide some resources for it.

And maybe most importantly, get the high school kids involved and let them carry the torch. Involved teens love to champion worthy causes. Get a wrist bracelet designed and manufactured. And get local media to help you. For something as worthy as EMO, I think you'd be surprised how many resources may be available.

I have seen a few shows on TV about this problem and it's a very worthy cause. If you are passionate, so will others become.

I know you think I'm a shy, shrinking violet but I am well known around here for taking on teachers, administrators and school boards. Usually in the arena of brainwashing my kids in liberal thought. It's always fun to make people do their jobs, particulaly with our kids! You can do it too with this issue!

Good luck buddy! And God bless you for caring enough to expose this subject further and for holding the School Board accountable.


Lavallee
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Fri Nov 19, 2010 5:36 pm

My daugther went through that phase (actually she tried). They do not become EMO within a day. It starts slowly by the dark eyeliner , black finger nails, drssing in black, ertc... The schools, if they do not have a dress code, it is very difficult for them to control anything, because the parents allow their kids to come out of the house like that. The parents needs to react, not the rest of society. When my daugther started to show some signs of change (black finger nails and eyeliners) , we told her that we would not accept this and prevent her from doing it. If she would come home witrh the black finger nails, we would stay beside her until it was removed.

Keeping an extra close eye on your kid on those changes and act rigth away instead of : ha kids!! funny style they have nowadays. If you give them too much margin, it is easy to get deep into bad habits. This includes, drugs, bad friends, alcohol, driving fast, bullying other kids, etc.... You have to speak about sex openly makle joke about it (so it is not aboo) and repeat the about prevention all the time, take every occassion to show a bad behavior seen on TV, on the sidewalk,etc.. and rexplain over and over the concept of good behavior outside of a conflict with your kid. You cannot accept racist joke, as they will think it is normal to be racist.

My advice Andy, is to speak to the parents. They have to be aware of these trends and react right away. They need to learn about these things if they want help their kids before it happens, not after. If it is after then learn twice as fast. A common mistake is to think that kids are adult at 12 years old because we want to give them our confidence that they will act as such. Lets find solutions to our problems in our house and lets not blame society for everything. I prefer hearing my kids telling me that I am ruining their life (this is something they say when they are upset, it does not last) , then for them top actually lose it. A tight leash is what the kids will appreciate the most from their parents once they understand.

Marc


songman52
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Fri Nov 19, 2010 6:46 pm

These are some good replies. Marc is right on about "kids" trying things out. They/we all go through stages of finding our own way in life, of pushing boundaries and testing limits. It is our job as parents to set limits and teach healthy boundaries, just as it is their "job" as adolescents to push against those rules.

As Bear and Marc both stated, it is important to be vigilant as parents. Will our kids hate us, fight us and disdain us? Of course they will, for a while. But they do need those limits, and they don't need parents to be their friends until they are older, say in their twenties or more.

Some of the EMO behavior is an attempt to rebel but at the same time to fit, usually with a peer group, same as other social groups in school. Yes, some of it is scary. As Marc said, keep interacting with your kids. Even when they don't want to participate in family activities, etc., it is important to keep them involved. "You're going with us; you don't have to have fun or enjoy it, but you're going." Of course, this doesn't start with teenagers, it has to begin earlier. Fight the important battles, but choose the ones that are important. Teach them beginning early to make good choices and let them bear the (natural) consequences. I could go on, but there are many resources about child rearing and parenting available.

A word about the school: Not knowing the exact circumstances, it's hard to say what they should or shouldn't do. Because of laws protecting families' rights (FERPA being one), one of them being privacy and confidentiality, sometimes school personnel are limited in what they can reveal and what they can discuss. As Marc and Bear said, parents have the duty, the responsibility and the power, and it starts with our OWN child. Many parents abrogate that duty and the power. (As a teacher, when my students would say I was mean or unfair because of my limits, expectations and consequences, I would tell them I HAD to be strict/mean because it was in my contract and I wanted to keep my job.) I think we often need to take the same approach as parents.

As a parent and also a long-time school counselor, I've seen adolescent behavior that is very troubling and concerns me. I've seen lots of fads, trends, activities, risky behaviors, and student acts from pranks to mischief to felonies. Even kids from what are called "excellent homes" can go astray. I think the best we can do is use firm guidance, set reasonable limits, BE GOOD ROLE MODELS, teach and preach from day one, pray for them and WITH them, talk openly about their concerns, and BE A PARENT (with all the difficulties that entails.)

Didn't mean to go on so much, but it definitely is an important issue, and one I've had some experience with.
My advice: Be vigilant, consistent, persistent, and loving. And don't be afraid to impose consequences/punishment nor afraid to give hugs. And give respect and "space" where it is warranted. In other words, maintain balance.

Jerry


AndyT
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Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:20 pm

Guys, thanks so much for your responses. I pay attention to our children. I'm always on the watch for signs of something wrong. I am not one of these parents that think school is a babysitting service.

But for a school administrator to know that this kind of thing is going on and not alert the parents is very nearly criminal in my mind. I'm not looking for names of kids or anything like that, so there is no conflict with any privacy laws. But if something like that is going on in my childs school, then I had better be informed, and the sooner the better. How am I to discuss it with my kids if I don't even know its happening?


thereshopeyet
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Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:30 pm

Thanks


unclewalt
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Sat Nov 20, 2010 1:42 am

Also, I heard about this singer who SWIVELS his HIPS -- Elrond Pressman, or something -- making all the girls go *crazy* and do horrible, dangerous things, going off with strange, greasy men and Lord knows what. Further, some group from Europe -- their name has something to do with junebugs, I think, or cocka-roaches -- are wearing their hair past their ears and encouraging kids to smoke *marihuana cigarettes*. *Reefers," the kids call it. Apparently, when they smoke this material, the girls lose control and become prostitutes, often in Negro districts, where all the "beats" hang out with their bongo drums to recite Communist poetry. And this band called Alternating Current, I heard, has backward messages on their records telling kids they should kill their dogs and wear their skins as gloves. We must BURN this material!! BURN IT.

Seriously, though. Emo seems pretty stupid, but it's no more dangerous (or stupid) than when I wore ridiculously huge bellbottom jeans and sported a Dylan fro. It's just a kind of music and a "culture" (if that's what you want to call it.) 99 percent of the kids who are into it (actually, I think the emo fad has already pretty much passed -- it's like 15 years old now) are typical moody teenagers, like most of us were. They don't cut themselves, etc. They listen to music and wallow in emotion, just like Frankie Valli fans did. And just like Carter Family fans did.

If you know of a kid who's in trouble, maybe you should try to help them, but blaming a music genre makes no sense. And trying to get a video banned is pointless (though you can report it if it violates Google's terms). The Internet is full of all kinds of crazy shit. Just one of millions of examples: There are whole groups of huge Web sites for the "pro-Ana" movement. This movement *promotes* anorexia nervosa as a "lifestyle." And there are white supremacists and terrorists and bombmaking instructions and free video porn showing the most disgusting things you can imagine (Two Girls, One Cup, anyone?). All of these are much, much worse than emo, which isn't, by itself, in the least bit dangerous. Look, allmusic.com even has a section for emo: http://allmusic.com/explore/style/emo-d4525

Despite all this cultural mayhem, by nearly all credible accounts teenagers are on average no more troubled than they have been for the past several decades. If a kid watches a video and then tries to cut him or herself, that kid was disturbed long before watching the video, and they were going to do something like that anyway. Think of it: would YOU have cut yourself as a teenager after watching a video telling you that you should? Of course not.

Panicky scaremongering, frankly, is less than helpful. Keep in mind that people said very similar stuff about three-quarters of the artists whose lessons are featured on this site. And many of those artists performed songs, or commented publicly, about how clueless our parents were about youth culture.

If any kind of music is really dangerous (which it isn't), the Rolling Stones were 10 times scarier than any emo band. Remember how they were going to rape our daughters? In at least a few cases, they actually did! And yet here we are, learning their songs and talking about how great they were.


AndyT
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Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:04 am

Walt,

What the?? You have no idea what I'm talking about do you. No, that's not a question. This is not about a new form of music I don't like, it's about videos I found on YouTube that actually PROMOTE cutting yourself as something 'cool' to do, especially when you are feeling bad, upset, angry.... And yes, I have reported them, and so far, most of them have been removed. (I have not checked all of them)

I have been aware for many years that some people do this, but I had never seen it actively promoted until now. Emo is a cultural phase that kids will go through, yes, I understand that, just like Goth or hippies or many other of the same type of thing. That is not what I'm upset about.

What upsets me is when a handful of otherwise normal girls in an elementary school actually cut their arms up because they 'learned' it from some YouTube videos. I'm not talking one or maybe two mental individuals who do sick things because they have serious problems, I'm talking about a dozen 3rd, 4th 5th and 6th graders doing this because they think it's cool. They saw it on YT and decided to try it.

Now we have children with actual physical damage that could have been avoided. I'm not scaremongering, I'm relating an actual incident that should have never happened. I really don't care about the make-up and weird clothes. This is about real people getting hurt because they are too young to know better.

If all the rest of the lemmings are flying off the cliff, how far behind are you? Or do you hold yourself and your family to a higher standard?


unclewalt
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Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:09 am

Oh, also. That video? It's a parody, and a rather obvious one. It's making fun of emo. My friends and I in high school made a mockumentary about Corporate Rock called JourneyStyxWagon 30 years ago -- kind of the same thing, but much funnier, and much better social commentary (I got an A on it in art class!)

Really, emo has nothing at all to do with cutting or suicide or anything. Those 21 million viewers watched that video for laughs.

I wondered where all this stuff about cutting and whatnot was coming from. I had never heard of emo having anything to do with any of that. AndyT, I appreciate your concern, but there's really nothing here to be worried about. I would venture to say that the most dangerous thing about emo is that so many kids think it's stupid that the fans are in danger of being made fun of or bullied.

Update in response to AndyT: yes, cutting is a problem, as it has been for years (and decades before that -- when few people knew it was a disorder.) But again *it has nothing to do with emo,* which is a musical genre, and sort of a culture.

I don't want to argue with you -- we're on the same side: if kids are cutting themselves, there needs to be intervention. But going after obviously jokey YouTube videos isn't going to help. I'm not sure what happened at your local school, but it's unrelated to that video, and to emo (that's true even if some kids watched an emo video telling them to cut themselves, which I seriously doubt). And it appears that it's you, not me, who is unclear on what emo is. It's just a musical genre that spawned a silly-but-harmless lifestyle. I listened to emo-forerunner Fugazi in the 80s and early 90s, and paid some attention to some of the bands that followed. By the mid-90s, the genre had become rather silly, and the lifestyle was for oversensitive kids, and I was in my 30s, so I stopped paying much attention, though I continued to see references to it. I'm guessing you have just recently heard of emo, and aren't quite clear on what it is. It attracts sensitive kids, so some of them are going to be troubled -- but probably far less than, say, death metal, which is also, by itself, harmless. Every genre of music has troubled kids listening to it.

Here's the video in question, which is just some kids making fun of emo. In no way does it "promote" cutting. It's *anti* emo; not because it's dangerous, but because it's stupid: http://bit.ly/buW0UB


AndyT
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Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:35 am

Walt,

Right. I'm not here to argue with you either. Emo is a silly game as far as I'm concerned.

What bothers me is that 12 young girls saw this video and some others and thought, "Wow, that looks cool. Lets try it." We know the videos that were watched because these children did not know how to remove the history on their browsers. They confessed to it and why they did it. THATS what bothers me. That and the school knew they were doing this and still said nothing. How many of these kids (at that age) even know what a parody is ?


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