A lot of our middle schools are 5th through 8 grade here idk about there @Indy Anna and the above post I meant to include you in sorry
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In my school district, K-6 was elementary school and 7-12 was jr/sr high. To quote multiple posts, click on the quotation icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the posts you want to include. Then, click on "Reply With Quote" at the bottom of one of the posts.
Children in their preteen and early teen years are just beginning to explore relationships and entering the formative stage of brain development. I don't think we should expect the girl to foresee the consequences of her prank. The fact that so many others went along with the "prank" demonstrates that they all (in the same developmental stage) perceived this in the same way. It is very tragic the boy took it so hard.
I'm not saying what the girl and her friends did was acceptable. From an adult perspective it was cruel, but a child would not see it from the same perspective. Where did they get the idea of "testing" a relationship? The concept may have been learned from an adult in the girl's life, or another child's life if someone else suggested the scheme, or it may have been picked up from a television program. There's a saying in Psychology: "Children learn what they live." That's why parents need to know what children are watching on television, and what they're doing on SM.
I remember in elementary school and HS children could be very cruel. In elementary school, I was often sick on Mondays (truly sick to my stomach) because I dreaded going to school. In HS my mother often wasn't there when I got home from school (taking my sister somewhere/picking her up or working). I'd sometimes go home after school and cry my eyes out until I heard my mother's car in the driveway. Then, I'd go in the bathroom and splash cold water on my eyes so she wouldn't know I was crying. Somehow, I made it into adulthood, and I find adults are no better. It's a cruel, scary world we live in. We see that every day here on WS and in the news. I'm not making an excuse for it, but it's something we must accept and adapt to in order to survive.
I'm reminded of an experience when I was in college and working for an agency on campus. My supervisor was a middle-aged man from Iran. One day, a young college student was telling us about a friend of hers who had recently broken up with her boyfriend. The girl returned to her apartment one day to discover that her ex had hung himself in her closet. Our supervisor--very seriously--asked how long the girl would be in prison. The rest of us--all young to middle-aged women-- giggled, not at the young man's demise but at the absurdity of the idea that the young woman should be held accountable for her ex's actions. Our supervisor's attitude, I understand, was a product of the Iranian society he was brought up in, where women are considered 2nd class citizens who are often raped, abused and punished by law at a man's whim. I know that's no one's intention here but thought it would help to see this incident from a different perspective. I know this is debatable because of the case of Michelle Carter. But, she was 17 at the time, she understood Conrad's MI and knew he'd previously attempted suicide, and she actively encouraged him to commit suicide. IMO, there are 2 extremes and each case needs to be viewed with a balanced perspective.
MOO
