Mrs.Barb Reid, a librarian in my school came to give students a talk. It was a heavy subject, the topic being her grandson “Sam” and her son and daughter-in-law’s relationship in Australia.
Mrs.Barb put up an image of her son and his wife. They were both smiling and looked like they were having the time of their life in what seemed like a celebration (perhaps their wedding). Samuel was born in 2007 (currently 12 years old) to Barb Reid’s son and daughter-in-law. After his birth, his mother got post-navel depression and started to self-medicate with drugs. She became mentally unstable. As a result, his mother and father’s relationship broke up when he was just 4. His father was a fly-in fly-out worker and so Sam stayed with his mother on weekdays and on weekdays, with his father. Because of his mother being mentally unstable, she neglected her son, forgetting to pick him up from school.
Mrs.Barb told us how Kelly (Sam’s mother) was bipolar, “taking crack” and was paranoid, thinking that people were chasing her. She continued and explained about how February last year, Kelly had suffered from a mental breakdown, and locked herself up in her bedroom. She was later sent to a mental hospital. Every time she was sent to another hospital, Sam had to move to another school. This meant that he had no opportunity to socialise and make friends because he would soon have to move to another school. I had heard multiple times how moving to a new school is troublesome as friend groups could already be established, making it harder to fit in. This may have been the case for Sam.
Sam didn’t have freedom. He was powerless and voiceless. One of the points which would’ve contributed to that was the fact that Sam’s mother did not allow Sam to have a passport so he couldn’t go on a holiday. We asked Mrs.Barb why and she answered that it was because Kelly was extremely paranoid, believing that people were going after her and her son. A student asked why Mrs.Barb couldn’t simply get a passport from her grandson. It was because getting a passport in Australia required signatures from both parents. This meant that Sam couldn’t get out of Australia for a break or escape from the situation which he had to deal with.
Mrs.Barb clicked the remote to show us a photo of Sam. He had his right hand supporting his face, which was looking away. His eyes had red bags under them, and he looked dejected. Mrs Barb looked towards the image and then to us. She was talking to Sam when he had said to her, “I’m a really sad person aren’t I, grandma”. I thought, ‘what did he have to go through to make him say that?’. Sam had no friends at school and was antisocial, a result of how he was being treated by his parents. He felt immense guilt towards his mother, as he believed that he needed to take care of her. Because of the amount of stress he carried, Sam suffered from chest pains.
His father remarried and had a new wife who didn’t really like Sam. Sam’s father prioritised taking care of his new wife and so didn’t play or talk to his son. “For Ben his 12 years has been hell. But for Sam, his whole life has been hell” Mrs.Barb stated. From what she said I realised that because Sam was born into this kind of environment, he didn’t know what true happiness felt like. Sam’s parents were both wealthy and weren’t poor so it wasn’t the lack of money which caused this situation. In my mind I had thought that this kind of situation was really rare, only happening to the people who lived out on the streets, or those celebrities who were secretly doing drugs and other illegal activities. I was wrong. Depression, paranoia and drugs doesn’t discriminate between the wealthy or poor. It can affect anyone and everyone. Kelly’s drug addiction and depression affected everyone around her. Her son who wanted to be with her, her loving husband and her supporting mother-in-law. I wondered how painful it must’ve been for Sam to see his mother changing, and for Mrs.Barb as she saw her once happy and beautiful daughter-in-law transforming into another person.
As the talk was about to end she answered a few questions, one of them being:
“Do you have any specific worries for your grandson?”
She replied “That he won’t get through it” and “What kind of man will he be?”. Sam was going through things a 12 year old shouldn’t have to go through and he was persevering. But if he gave up at any moment, he could change and become like how his mother was now. A child growing up in an unloving and violent environment can mould them into a person reflecting those traits. Mrs.Barb was worried that that would happen to her grandson.
Mrs.Barb warned us that it was always possible that someone in this school or even in the very classroom we were having the talk in, was suffering from a similar situation.