wwyd? very sensitive - teens, bullying and suicide.

[Shitsville]

I am wondering what you would do in this situation.

2 years ago, a 12 year old girl at your DD's school commits suicide. This girl happened to be a friend of your DD.

Bullying is found to be suspected cause for suicide.

DD doesn't speak much on the subject, other than to say how much she misses her and to have the odd cry.

2 years later, you come across an msn conversation between your DD and another girl and one particular message catches your eye ...

"Just cos u feel guilty about (suicide girl) u take it out on every1 else. get councelling or summink cos we r sick of it"

you ask DD what the message meant, she breaks down and says it was all her fault, she was to blame for the girl taking her own life.

Turns out that a few days before the death, your DD and the girl had argued and your DD had said to her "no wonder you get bullied, you bring it all on yourself"

So what would you do? Not my DD btw.

Nightmare scenario.

The first thing i would say is that the DD is clearly not the bully. She may have said something thoughtless and/or tactless about her friend's propensity to be bullied, but she did not bully her. It is not her fault.

Th dd needs to open up lots more, and tbh, she needs a qualified child therapist or family therapist to work with her and family about what happened.

xxRCB

Oh no - how awful and what a huge burden for such a young person to carry. THere is no way that that one comment was responsible and this little girl needs help to understand that!! I second the motion for some therapy to help out. Perhaps the other girl could do with it too.

Oh god, how awful.

Get her counselling straight away, one incident is incredibly unlikely to have been the reason the girl committed suicide. She more than likely had mental health issues over a long period of time and it was a result of many things going on in her life.

How much do they/you/the school know about the day to day bullying? I think it would be helpful for her to see that other things were going on as well, as I assume there would be.

If there aren't other factors then I guess she needs to work on moving past it and forgiving herself, she can't bring her back

Counseling to help her deal with her guilt? It is true that she didn't bullied the other child but that comment may have been the last straw for that other girl.

Just telling her it is not her fault is not going to help, she needs professional help to deal with this. Such scenario is far too much for an adult, further more for a child.

The bullies were identified. She wasn't among them but she thinks it was her comment that pushed the girl over the edge. Especially as they never did make up after the argument.

There were family issues too, it wasn't just bullying apparantly.

By that I don't mean that she is responsible, just that it is a feelig too big to carry on her own.

This is way too much for a young girl to deal with. I second professional help. What an awful situation to be in.

It's not the fault of whoever said the 'last thing'. The thousand things that came before it were the problem.

This is much too much for the girl and her family to deal with alone.