Students in class. [Photo/Pinterest]
There is a Standard 8 pupil being reported to have hanged himself after losing his number one position to a rival.
He wrote a note on the blackboard saying he couldn't stomach the defeat and has decided to pay the ultimate price for not measuring up.
These and among many untold stories are the real issues affecting our children of an age in our modern society today.
We must teach our children to be emotionally resilient, you will not be there with your child all the time to shield them from outside aggression. Teach your child basic survival skills, teach them how to stand up to bullies in the yard, help your child build psychological reserves. This world is so brutal people will step on your nerve endings to get ahead in life, and never let them find you unprepared to respond.
Inform your children that it is okay to fail in school, to be proud of that protruding hernia that their friends keep mocking them about in school, it is normal to be sent away from school for lack of fees while the others remain behind because their parents are well-off, it is okay to be driven to school in a jalopy while their peers' parents have the latest Range Rover Sport.
A child sitting for his KCPE in 2017 is the same as the child who sat for his KCPE in 1997 in our class. The only difference is that the external pressures that surround that child have become so pronounced that the children need an additional layer of moral and psychological fortification for them to hack it through.
This mental strengthening must begin from home.