Do you know the meaning of what you say when you tell a young adult or child to go “kill themselves”? Do you know the damage you can cause a person just by speaking these toxic hateful words that maybe you don’t mean and are just saying out of anger? Do you know that 11% of adolescents have a depressive disorder by the time they hit the age of 18? Did you know that 350,000,000 people have ONE sort of depressive disorder globally? These are just some of the statistics of people who are battling depression and the number is increasing because of our generation today and the phrases that children/adolescents have coined as okay.

Our generation today has a tendency to bully one another and have a superiority complex, which damages the self-esteem of the other children competing for some sort of attention and to be recognized by others instead of constantly thrown in a corner because they don’t live up to societal standards. This is a toxic domino effect that begins with society plaguing the population with high limitations and expectations of young children, which in turn creates an illusion to parents that their children must compete to be the superior one. This constant nagging of expectations from parents (who are getting these deluded ideas from society) are affecting children into their adolescence and eventually their adult life.

When you are a child in elementary school, praise and criticism is a fundamental part of trying to decipher the right, wrong, and how to improve. All around us as we flow through the education system we are forced to compete with one another in every aspect academically, socially, and athletically, i.e valedictorian, class president, captain of the football team etc. If a child is to hear all the time that they “are not good enough” and that they “will never amount” to another child in class then that is what they will carry with them through their whole life. It starts from the very beginning and the environment they are introduced/adapt to. It comes from the older “role models” who are presenting these kids with praise, constructive criticism, harsh criticism, or just plain hateful comments.

When a child is growing up, (middle school and high school years) their brain is at their most critical stage. It is when they start developing the identity that they want others to perceive themselves as, and with the preconceived notion that is implanted in these adolescents’ brains that they will not live up to these asinine expectations, then their whole identity and approach to socially interact with others will be corrupt. That is why people need to “wake up” so to speak and see what they are doing to their children and how their attitudes can be rubbed off on them. A child learns to mimic their parents at a very young age and it’s time to set a good example.