I can’t help but wonder how many of those teens who feel like they have no one to talk to about their emotions have parents who don’t think their teen has emotional struggles because, surely, they would talk to their “supportive” parents.
Don’t assume your kids are fine because they haven’t talked to you about struggling. They may be in that gap.
There are more details to describe what some men meant by no one, but no one was a very popular response. I’m not surprised by that. I think most men don’t open up 100% to anyone. Part of it is not having that kind of relationship with anyone, part of it is society’s expectations of men to be strong and stoic, part of it is women’s expectations that the men in their lives remain strong and stoic, and part of it is just our unwillingness to have uncomfortable conversations.
Ben points out that the Child Tax Credit was expanded to assist poor families with pandemic-related economic hardships in 2021.
The rate of childhood poverty dropped to historic lows.
Then it went away. And, well, what else would you expect?
According to NPR, “…A year ago, child poverty hit a historic low of 5.2%. The latest figures [a year after the child tax credits expired] put it at 12.4%, the same as the overall poverty rate. The surge happened as record inflation was rising and a lot of pandemic relief was running out, but Census officials and other experts say a key was the child tax credit.”
Penelope gives a very detailed explanation of how trafficking starts online, in chat around popular online video games, and how it spreads. Most of all, however, she provides an incredibly important look into what a trafficker looks for in a kid playing video games:
Again, as Peter goes on to describe the issue is not that people might suddenly play some Tetris when dealing with trauma. That’s probably not going to harm them much, it’s that we, as a society, will come to expect that is the “magic pill” to help everyone deal with trauma and start dismissing it as something that’s easy to fix with some Tetris when it’s much, much more complicated than that. We shouldn’t lose sight of that fact.
As Brandy shares, processing grief can sometimes mean being angry, or feeling things about the death of a loved one that don’t always jive with how we’d want suicide reported, but these are not spokespeople, advocates, or reporters, they are people dealing with their own pain.
Maybe, if we want people to speak their truth, we need to give them the room to express it the way they feel it, not silence them in the interest of not hearing terms we don’t love.
