Quentin Gordon-Smith
A couple years ago my mom and dad split up and I was really going through it. I was angry, I was sad, I was confused, but mostly I was hurt. I was so used to seeing them together and all of a sudden they split so it felt unreal. When I went into school I didn’t want to be bothered. I'll always have my head down and not do anything and if someone touched me I will flip and try to fight them all because of my anger and frustration at home. Eventually I got over it but at the time it was rough. My little brother is also affected by this. Our mom and his dad were married and they got a divorce and that broke him, and now he rarely talks to his dad and rarely sees his dad. He lacks a father figure, after the break up he didn’t really communicate with his dad. He was influenced by the negativity around him and that led him to go down the wrong path. His grades dropped, he isolated himself, He only came out of his room when he was hungry and when he had to use the bathroom. This is a problem that happens everyday and everywhere. According to Forbes magazine “34% of kids are living with an unmarried parent, 70%-80% of Americans consider their families dysfunctional” (Gourani, Nov 24, 2019).. Therefore, we really don’t know what people are going through. That's why people should be kind to one another. I speak about this now because it’s really affecting students. I see kids skipping class at my school, smoking in the bathrooms, and fighting with frustration and anger. Who knows, maybe that’s their way of showing they need help. Family stability really does play a huge role in how students act in school. All those people need is someone to talk to, a person by their side that they can trust and talk to freely without being judged. That helped me, I believe that’s the cure. Andre Smith, a social worker at my school said “yes it is a big issue. Most students I speak with have family stability issues that they are dealing with.” Also Andre Smith said “What we normally end up doing is processing situations and circumstances. Solutions can vary. Sometimes it might be putting services in place, but more often we talk about how to make the best of situations that can’t be changed right now and deal with them in the healthiest possible way. It definitely varies depending on the student and situation. Often students need someone to listen and that alone seems to help a lot” (Smith A, 3/23/23). An adjacent issue is work. Some parents work a lot to put food on the table and to keep a roof over their head. So that leads to the parent not being able to spend time with their child. Fifty-one percent of working fathers and forty-five percent of working mothers spend a little bit of time with their kids due to work. Also when parents work so much, children have behavior problems, poor thinking skills, and they are more likely to be overweight according to my research (Milkie et. al, 2018). Another adjacent issue is affairs. Affairs impact family stability because It breaks apart parents from their children. 20% to 40% of marriages end in divorce because of a cheating partner. Alcohol or drug use causes about 24% of divorces. Married couples who argue constantly are another reason for divorce; about 57.7% of couples get divorced because of daily arguing (Divorce.com staff, April 12, 2023). My solution to this problem is to create a support group with counselors and social workers at East. Kids don’t know that they have access to a social worker, I didn’t even know until my senior year of high school. So I think having a support group with counselors and social workers will be a good idea because it’s a way for the kids to have someone to communicate with about their problems and most importantly have someone to trust.
1 Comment
Snyder
4/28/2023 08:45:24 am
Thank you for sharing on this topic. I think your solution is a good one. How would you get the information out to students about the group? I'm also wondering if you think there are students who wouldn't feel comfortable with sharing this information with a group of students?
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