A few days ago, my daughter of 13 asked me if I knew about the Blue Whale Game. Thanks to Steemit, the word whale got my attention :-) and I asked her to tell me about it. Well, you know she said, that game with this videos ending with suicide. The words staggered out a bit, not really giving me a clear idea of what the game was about.
I didn’t like the word suicide in it and decided to Google it. What if found was terrifying. I am not into negative news but I want my fellow Steemian parents to know about this.
The Blue Whale Game or Challenge is a series of challenges or dares one has to perform to reach to next levels. The challenges range from climbing a monument, making incisions in your body parts to the ultimate challenge which is suicide.
This sounds like a joke but it isn’t.
My daughter’s teacher spoke about it because a young boy in a nearby town committed suicide. They discovered a Whatsapp group on his phone with another 83 fellow students actively playing the game. The Wiki page lists almost 20 countries where suicides have happened.
I tried to find the game but couldn’t, Google and other search engines have been forced to remove all links to it. There is also a lot of contra-movement going on to extradite the game but the game is still spreading.
It might seem totally un-understandable why a game like this can spread. If we ought to understand this, we have to understand the averse effects one can have when told what to do or what not to do, it is the law of our nature that creates evolution. It is the reason that hippie children become clerks and clerkie children become hippies.
Children don’t need to be taught, they need to be guided in their self-learning.
My daughter’s teacher did what he thought was best. Informing them about the existence of this game but information spreads knowledge and information goes lightning fast these days. It is probably due to journalists and bloggers that the game got spread in the first place.
I will not argue against his approach of trying to provide information but he did something else which was a very big mistake, he told them that anybody who watches one of the videos will be put in jail.
I see 3 big mistakes in this one action:
Firstly, he lied.
Secondly, he tells the children what not to do.
Thirdly, he translates his own fears to something scary for the children.
If you see this from the eyes of the child, there is a lot going on:
Firstly, they are not stupid, they feel the lie.
Secondly, they want to do anything that is forbidden.
Thirdly, they want to be brave and go against their fears.
Combine this with the impossibility to understand suicide and you end up with very curious children about this whole “game”.
I asked my daughter if she was curious about the videos and the answer was yes. Looking into the why of this curiosity is the only way out here, guiding into the awareness of feelings and bringing the source of it into the light dissolves the source.
I am not a psychologist, this is just my own perspective. Once again I am reminded how having children can be a great path to a higher awareness that shows the way. Selfless service and unconditional love are very high values many of us are not familiar with.
I ask the universe that this game will not further spread and that parents and teachers will realise that blunt refusal and no’s have opposite effect, guiding through awareness is the only key to unlock the full potential of a child.
Take care,
bub
