For the sake of the kids: a rant

Oh dear, this might get political.

A middle school in El Paso, Texas is banning students from wearing “all black clothing head to toe.”

RIP to the wardrobes of the theatre and goth kids.

Dark blue is the new black.

This isn’t black, it’s onyx.

Does this really matter this much?

I don't know why this is my breaking point with all of the awful stuff happening in the world, but apparently it is. I’m losing my shit over this. I can’t stop talking about it.

Maybe because I'm totally self involved and I’m wearing black head to toe right now. It’s my required dress most show days; my Dad even jokes that people in my industry are “black collar workers”.

I also wore a lot of black in school. It made me feel cool and artsy and very New York (having never been here) and it effortlessly matched the thick line of eyeliner licked under both eyes every day of my life from thirteen to thirty.

Maybe I just don’t know how to talk about the harder, bigger stuff yet.

The reasoning for this new dress code rule is that ‘all black clothing is tied to mental health issues like depression’ and also “criminality.” ‘The school says teachers have noticed that when a student goes from wearing colorful or light clothing to all black, they are often experiencing depression.’

We should do some research here and copy the word for word quotes and link sources.

This is not a research piece. It’s a rant.

IF there's any correlation between wearing all black and depression, it's definitely not that black clothes CAUSE depression. IF there’s a correlation, wearing all black is a symptom.

Shouldn't we WANT clear symptom indicators of a student newly falling into depression or any altered mental state? So then we can reach out and support that student? How nice would it be to have a straight forward sign that a student is struggling mentally?

ALSO do we really want to stifle that student’s ability to express themself in a relatively innocuous way? As a chronically depressed person, as a student and now as an adult, I would LOVE if something as easy as choosing black clothes meant someone would see that I needed help or some gentleness. Putting more restrictions on how kids express themselves is going to either 1. make them look for another (potentially more destructive) way to express themselves or 2. hold the things they don’t express in their little bodies until they become a dysregulated mess of an adult and/or explode.

I’m all for improvements to the mental health of youth (and adults) in this country. I think we need to take that seriously. I would even like to be one of the people doing it. I think we should have more adult facilitated, peer support systems like Barbara Silverman’s Let’s Talk about It group. I wore black a lot as a kid. I don’t know if there was conscious or subconscious reasoning for my choice besides a fashion choice. I do know as an adult that I have and had chronic depression. I also know that I can’t even imagine an adult at my school asking me about it. I don’t ever remember. We had a guidance counselor in high school, but I was under the impression the entirety of her job was to help us get into college if we wanted to ask her about that. There was no mental health support in school.

I found mine in the theatre. Where I wore all black.

But mostly all of this irritates me because we are resorting to STUPID rules like “no black clothing, kids!” because we won't pass fucking gun control laws to protect our kids.

That’s a stretch.

No. It’s not.

Schools are left to try ANYTHING ELSE to desperately to keep our kids safe in our schools. And by anything else, I mean a million measures that compromise the lifestyles and mental health of the children INSTEAD OF some adults compromising on the length of time they'd have or how automatically and quickly their toys can kill.

Children sacrifice their clothing choices and then still their lives instead of our politicians giving up some extra NRA dollars.

Welp, now we’ve scared readers away from this Substack with “liberal” politics

I think its irresponsible at this point to be non-political.

I don’t think children’s safety should be politics at all. I don’t think politics should be as polarized as it is.

We’re all on the same side. We all want the kids to be okay.

Right?

Right??!!

I don’t need to take people’s guns, I’ve shot a gun recreationally before at a range myself. But I do think we need federal laws regarding requirements and I don’t understand how we keep letting kids getting shot rather than making a couple more rules for responsible gun ownership. Just like we do for cars, which are also things we own that can kill people. A thing that requires a license, and courses, training time, and a test. And then we drive on roads with rules.

Speaking of things that have been banned in schools…

-Cellphones (good)

-Books and books and books and books and books

-Mirrors in girl’s bathrooms. This is to deter people from gathering, socializing, and making TikTok videos in the mirrors, has also implemented digital bathroom passes that track students when they take bathroom breaks.

-Open-toe shoes, hoodies, tights/leggings, hats, lounge pants, sunglasses, headbands, bonnets (what century are we in?! *see comments), bandanas, crop tops, fitted dresses/shorts/skirts, jeans with holes above the knee, and crocs.

-Energy drinks and other forms of caffeine

-TikTok

-Dodgeball

-Stanley cups and other metal or glass drink containers with handles (this was later changed, but the rule was initially instated because a seventh grader BEAT ANOTHER GIRL with her cup.)

My parts are in spirited debate.

Yes, we do need to put some restrictions on kids to help them learn and keep them safe.

Kids are in school to learn. We should limit distractions.

Sure, but learn what? Is socializing part of

And distractions are part of our world. Learning how to cope and regulate among distractions is a life skill. Learning how to prioritize is also a life skill.

What kind of adults are we trying to encourage these kids to be? What skills matter most? Do we want them to be able to recite facts or navigate the world?

How are we motivating kids? Are we motivating them at all or just using discipline because we can’t figure out motivation (probably because it’s not one size fits all) and our education system is an underfunded mess.

Educators are doing the best they can

We need to pay. teachers. more.

If this is the real world we are preparing our kids for, what are we saying about the real world?

Speaking of the real world…

States are passing legislation to give teachers panic buttons in their classrooms. (while still not strengthening their gun laws). Some sources claim that the police were notified as quickly as they were about the shooting that just happened in Georgia because the school had invested just the week before in a new product that manufactures panic button in ID cards. CENTEGIX is a Georgia based company and the first industry in the dropdown menu on their website is K-12 Education. I can’t find pricing information. The site encourages scheduling a demo.

More smart, scummy people making a profit off of loose gun laws. I wonder if the NRA is one of their funders.

Or maybe they are people who are actually trying to find a solution when legislators won’t.

Or a combination.

Georgia has some of the weakest gun laws in the country. Permits and background checks are not required in order to purchase firearms, including assault weapons. Gun owners in Georgia are also not legally required to lock up or otherwise securely store firearms away from children. Gun owners can even conceal carry without a license (this law was just passed in 2022).

In April 2021, in response to anti-gun violence nonprofit Giffords Law Center giving Georgia an "F" for its gun laws, Kemp said he was proud of the failing grade.

"I'll wear this 'F' as a badge of honor.”

Speaking of politicians…

I just took a youth mental health first aid course. It wasn’t required of me. I didn't have a specific reason to take it other than having kids I love in my life and generally wanting to be able to better support young people's mental health and the health of our future.

I wonder if JD Vance has ever taken the course. Or if his wife has.

Their comments about women without kids not having a trusted investment in our future obviously pissed me off since I am a woman without kids who cares deeply about kids.

But, as with most things people say, it says a lot more about him than it actually does about childless women.

JD Vance does not give a shit about anything that does not affect him personally. He can't even IMAGINE it.

And it's not because he said some misogynistic things about women that I know this.

People assume other people’s brains work the same as theirs. As humans, we have to make concerted effort to resist this bias. So JD Vance saying childless women don’t care about children or the future means he thinks people don’t care about things that don’t directly affect them. And he only assumes this because it’s true of him. This man doesn't have empathy for people who are not the same at him.

I don't really think it's wise for someone who cannot even imagine caring about something or someone that doesn't directly apply to him to be second in charge of our country.

Speaking of things JD Vance said…

He specifically extended this childless women teachers/school administrators. Which is a narrative that feels familiar unfortunately, although it was less overt. My boss at an education company I used to work out projected similar feelings. He trusted the opinions of the parents on the team who started almost every sentence with “well my kids would…” or “As a parent, I’d want x,y, or z” more than the other team members who did not have children.

Which irritated me for a couple reasons…

1. All of the parents on the team were middle class white males. And none of them were in the education department of the company.

2. The people who CHOOSE to work in education do so after their own years of education and research in child development. Their work with students goes beyond self service or personal investment. It's a love for kids and an investment in their (and our) future. I read books about different learning styles and volunteered with kids for fun. But my voice was often ignored because it didn’t align with a thing that happened once with one of their kids.

3. Teaching doesn't pay shit. They're in it for the kids. They’re certainly not there for the money.

Speaking of money…

You know what I have an abundance of that some of my parent friends do not? Time and money.

You know what a real threat to the men in power is? People who are not them having time and money.

You know what is a threat especially to misogynistic men in power who assume everyone thinks and will act like them given?

Women with time and money. Especially ones who might care about what those men in power and doing and how they’re shaping our collective future.

Because time and money can be used for research, for projects, for paying attention, for resting enough to fight hard fights.

Speaking of childless women…

I love kids. I volunteer with kids’ summer school programs and other programs supporting reading. I tried to transition out of my career and into education for a stint. I used to be a nanny, I directed youth theatre programs, I was a site director at the YMCA. I babysit my friends’ kid for free and want to snag him every time I see them. I spend days with my exes kids and planned an apartment carnival for them for his birthday last year. I care deeply about what’s going on with our kids. I want them to make the world good for them. I want to make them good for the world.

I know if we properly support kids, we change the world.

I once read “find what breaks your heart, there's your purpose.” Pretty sure this was in Glennon Doyle’s Untamed.

Kid shit breaks my heart. And I don’t have a one. And I don't need one to care.

Speaking of not having a kid…

You know what I have an abundance of that some of my parent friends do not? Time and money.

You know what a real threat to the men in power is?

Speaking of kids…

I recently hung out with an 8 year old. I've known her for her whole life and I love her deeply deeply deeply deeply.

I’ve watched her morph and transition relentlessly in her eight years on this planet, but I go without seeing her for months at a time and this time how much she had changed felt too quick.

She talked to me about a sex toy she had a dream about. She tied her shirt up above her bellybutton and rolled her eyes at me because I suggested she wear shorts that were "not short enough”. She told me her “woo woo” was itchy because she had just shaved it without using shaving cream.

If she had downtime, she opened her phone and I could hear the endless chatter of Snapchat stories. It made my head and my heart hurt.

I became dysregulated and I scrolled on my phone too. Then I felt guilty for not coming up with more activities. Then I felt tired.

I helped her get a library card and we were looking for books she could check out or even download on her phone. She told me she liked reading stories with drama like "stories where the boy breaks up with the girl, but then regrets it and has a terrible life.

Later that day, I found her in her room playing with her dolls - talking as if she was them - they were decorating their house and planning for a vacation on the boat.

She’s still eight.

I want her to be alright so badly.

I want the kids to be alright. Maybe they are; maybe it’s just a different alright. I don’t know.

Speaking of love…

Today I got my haircut. I went somewhere new downtown next to the venue I’m working in today. There are about ten salons in a two block radius. I don’t remember how I landed on this one with this hairdresser.

But we are kindred souls.

We spent the hour and fifteen minutes talking about the world, echoing millennial I want to get out of here and live a peaceful life stories back and forth.

Yes!

I know!

Exactly!

Eventually, we were talking about living in a commune with our friends and raising kids with communities of people instead of in partnership.

She told me elephants raise their young with other female elephants, called aunts, in their herd.

Speaking of being an aunt

Speaking of matriarchy

Speaking of community

Speaking of less polarization

Speaking of protecting our kids

Speaking of what kind of world we want to live in