Hot Topic – Sexual Orientation, Multiculturalism, and Suicide

Cognitive and emotional development relate to many different hot topics.  However I am going to focus on sexual orientation, multiculturalism, and suicide as these three topics seem to be the most prevalent in today’s society here in America.

Sexual orientation greatly impacts an adolescent and their emotional development as they are beginning to discover who they are which might differ from the norm of being heterosexual.  However, whether gay, straight, bisexual, or just not sure, almost all teens have questions about physically maturing and sexual health which impact their emotional development.  Yet with just like any other type of adolescent developments, the kids who are not amongst the norm have higher risks for suicide, depression, drinking and drug issues, earlier sexual encounters and so on.  The key is to allow and encourage adolescents to express what they are thinking and feeling so they can work through those thoughts and feelings to figure out who they are.  I came across a website called Teen Health http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/guys/sexual_orientation.html# which I found to be very informative and a great resource for adolescent teens to read as well so they know their feelings are not abnormal.  A large part of an adolescent’s emotional development is figuring out who they are and what they stand for or their self-concept.  Sexual orientation is a part of that concept which adolescents need to figure out for themselves. 

As I mentioned earlier stigmas for LGBT students increase their drop out levels, drinking and drug use, suicide rates, and so on as they feel like they can’t bear the abuse from their teachers, peers, and even parents or family members who shun them because of their sexual orientation.  This thought has always baffled me as I do not believe, with any bone in my body, that your sexual orientation is a choice or something you can control and therefore it should not be held against a person in any way shape or form.  I have friends who are gay, lesbian and bisexual and I can honestly say I do not believe any of them choose that lifestyle.  Heck, almost all of them had to work darn hard just to accept it for themselves and be at peace with it.  So for people who think your sexual orientation is a choice, I ask them to sit down for a minute and ask themselves who in their right mind would choose to have a harder life, be more at risk for drinking and drug use, contemplate suicide, and not be accepted by some of their peers and family members.  I do not know of anyone who would choose that life.  We, especially as teachers, need to be supportive of and accept LGBT adolescents by encouraging them to explore themselves just like we would for any heterosexual adolescent.

I found the All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families link to be interesting as I, having grown up in heterogeneous family, had never thought about the additional challenges that LGBT families face.  It is good to see that even with all of the stigmas attached to the LGBT community research uniformly shows positive outcomes for children in LGBT families.  We, as a society have come a long way in educating people about the concept of sexual orientation and accepting differences.  However we still have a long way to go.

Multiculturalism is a term which is growing in importance each and every day in America as the melting pot of the world keeps growing in diversity.  The importance for adolescents to have a culture and community to connect with greatly effects their emotional development going back to the idea of defining their self-concept.  Having lived in a culture other than my own I can greatly relate to this as I lived abroad in a culture with different customs, norms, and language.  Having this disconnect from my own culture taught me a lot but it also made me realize how proud I am of my culture and heritage.  That experience made me realize just how much being an American is a part of my self-concept and the same holds true for each adolescent as they discover their culture.  As defined in the Multiculturalism link multiculturalism is a movement whose goal is to elevate and celebrate diverse ethnic backgrounds which is both challenging and provocative.  American adolescents do not come from one culture, they come from a mixture.  I found a post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mccormick/multiculturalism_b_1681500.html which does a good job discussing the struggles with multiculturalism and how the best solution is through story telling.  Diversity starts at home and storytelling is an ideal way to promote a child's appreciation of multicultural values and enable them to view things from a different view point.  Multiculturalism is here to stay; so better started accepting that fact.

Lastly, I am going to quickly talk about teen suicide.  This has been a hot topic for a few years as it is amongst the leading killers of adolescents and is seen as a preventable public health problem.  If you want to see some of the ugly facts, here is a link I found http://thewip.net/talk/2012/06/alarm_at_teenage_suicide_trend_1.html.  However, I agree and disagree with the idea that suicide is preventable.  I say this because I had a family member commit suicide and I honestly believe there was nothing we could have done to prevent it besides have had him on a constant 24 hour lock down.  He was in his early twenties when he took his life, not quite an adolescent, but I still think his example is applicable.  Throughout his adolescent years he had issues with the law and was your typical adolescent delinquent.  He had been in and out of the juvenile court system with treatments in-between.  None of them seemed to work and at one of the depths of his life he decided to end it.  He had the intervention and treatments to help him deal with his issues, yet he made the decision to stop fighting.  I do not believe that is a preventable public health issue.  As the general public we need to ensure that adolescents have access to genuine help.  However, we cannot force them to use it. 

Overall the problems related to sexual orientation, multiculturalism, and suicide for adolescents really irritates me.  Why do we, as a society of intelligent human beings, have such difficulty in accepting one another just as we are?  We are all different and we should learn to accept those differences and learn from them instead of creating a continuing cycle of hatred and hurt.