Episode 12 - Season 2 - What Can We Do About Bullying and Why Does It Seem To Be Impacting More Kids Than Ever Before? The Story of 13-Year-Old Terry Badger III, Lost To Suicide

Terry Badger III was a 13-year-old athlete with so much promise. He’d hit 300 foot home runs, and already been clocked throwing the ball 71 mph as a young pitcher. He and his dad would play ball every day after school, hitting fly balls to each other. Terry would text his parents every morning “I love you”…& after school “homework is done, ready to practice.” That was, until one day, his mom went out to run an errand and his dad never got the after school text. Terry’s mom found her son in his room, lifeless, after a suicide. But there were no signs in their car ride from school home together. They discovered a video where Terry blamed how he felt on the bullies at his school - bullies he called out by name, who called him things like “fatass,” told him he looked like he shopped at the Goodwill store for all his clothes, made fun of all his haircuts. He said in the video “I hate my life” (because of them). 

Daren, Theo, and Eric had on Dr. Mark Allen, Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist who specializes is youth athletics. Together they discussed why these incidences of bullying are occurring more than ever, why we are losing more kids than ever to suicide where bullying is a main ingredient, and some steps that may be able to be taken to reverse these trends. This is an episode for anyone with kids to listen to, and even for parents to invite their kids to listen along with, as of the guests shared their own form of bullying they experienced as kids to normalize how common these scenarios are & encourage discussion.

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