The 11-year-old boy’s suicide – What went wrong?

By Smith Leong


WHAT HAPPENED?


• 11 year old boy’s death concluded by State Coroner Marvin Bay that it is no accidental fall but an act of suicide.

• The suicide could have been a result of pressure he faced from his parents regarding his academic results.

• It is reported that out of the five subjects for his mid-year exam, he had failed two and had just managed to pass the other three.


DEAR INTERNET, PLEASE TAKE A CHILL PILL


As if losing their son ain’t bad enough, parents now have to be judged online. How much do we really know from an article like this?



FAITH IN HUMANITY...RESTORED



THEN AGAIN, LET'S JUST BLAME THE SOCIETY?



IT'S PROBABLY NOT A POPULAR OPINION, BUT...


We’ve no idea what went down at home between the parents and their kid and it’s really easy for us to pass off comments about the parents based on what we read online.


Thing is, everyone has different tolerance to everything. Those who have been through army might have experienced causes where our officers not only scolded us but also our parents who did nothing wrong. In fact, they don’t even know who your mother is but you get what I mean lah.


Is life getting harder for people? Or are people getting softer? I know it might just be an isolated case and some might even remark that it’s easy for me to say since I’ve not been in the kid's shoes and gone through what he did. But that is my point exactly – none of us are the parties involved in this matter.


Should the system/s (which ‘systems’ are we referring to anyway? Education? Legal? Parenting/Family? ) be blamed and hence changed because of such cases? Can we then in turn prevent such tragedies simply by changing our system?


I’m not saying that we should just brush it off by saying “it’s just suay lor” and not discuss about it. Of course we should try to prevent this from happening again but unfortunately, there really isn’t a one size fit all solution here. Every parent should play their part to make sure their child do their best in life but at the same time, we cannot because of the nagging worry that such a tragedy happen again and end up giving up on our meritocratic system?


And beyond all, we should just keep our 2 cents to ourselves.


This article first appeared on Five Stars And A Moon. It is reproduced with permission.


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