How many of you went to your prom? Your Junior formal? Your Spring fling? I attended those in my far off days of youth. Most did. My dates were friends not boyfriends and those nights came and went like a teenage right of passage. Important when you are at the age to attend them and a hopefully pleasant memory of growing up when you look back.
At least it's supposed to be. Tragically, this years prom will not be a memory that the students of John Law High School in Milford CT, will want to keep. It is however, one that will torment them for the rest of their lives. And sadly it is one that is becoming frighteningly more common.
One of their classmates, a 16 year old girl, was stabbed and killed this morning. Tonight would have been her prom.
Why was she killed? Did she witness a crime? Walk in on a robbery? No....
She told a boy no when he asked her to go to the prom with him.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/girl-16-fatally-stabbed-on-day-of-prom-at-connecticut-high-school/
No. That little word. Its been said to all of us. We've said it to others. It sucks to hear, I admit that. But rejection is part of life. Failing is part of life. Losing is a part of life. All of it. Facing the bad and working through it is how we learn and how we grow.
What terrifies me is that the youth of today are being shielded from it. Take for example children's sports teams... there are no losers. Everyone gets a trophy. How does a child learn to handle defeat if they never have to face failure? How do they learn to strive for improvement if the status quo is perfectly acceptable? And how do they handle life once they're grown, if they aren't prepared to fail or be rejected once in a while?
Life does not hand out trophies for last place. It flings out rejection and failure at every turn and sometimes you will get hit by it and knocked down. Children need to learn that, not be shielded from it. They need to feel sting of failure so they can work harder for the success. They need to hear that little word No. If they are allowed to believe it doesn't exist.... as though its opposite is their given right...then we all fail together.
