Child Soldiers

Child soldiers are victims for many reasons.  First of all, they don’t have a choice about fighting in wars.  They are forcefully recruited while they are in desperate need of various things such as shelter and family.  Many are captured from refugee camps.  The child soldiers are also taken advantage of.  They are drugged a lot to get them to fight in the battles.  In addition, they have very terrible side affects after the war.

                                                                                        

One reason that child soldiers are victims is that they don’t have an option about enlisting in the army and are taken advantage of.  In the article “Armed and Underage,” it states that most of the children who fight come from poor families.  In the Ishmael Beah video, Beah said that the children would go to the army base looking for help, and would be forcefully recruited.  Many of the child soldiers also came from families that were separated.  This is because the lost and alone children would go to the nearby military base thinking that the people there would help and support them, but instead they are taken advantage of and forced to fight.  The military leaders use the children’s misfortunes to benefit themselves.  Children are also kidnapped by refugee camps in the middle of the night and forced to fight.  They aren’t permitted to leave, and even if they could, they would have no where to go.  Another example of how child soldiers can be taken advantage of is when a terrorist group convinced a semi-retarded teenager to suicide bomb.  The group took advantage of the boy’s disability.  Child soldiers are victims, they are brainwashed and told many lies to make them fight. 

Another reason that the child soldiers are victims is that they are drugged when in battle.  In the Ishmael Beah video, Beah said that in order for a child to fight in a war they had to completely lose themselves.  This shows that the children could not normally fight battles, but when they start in the army, they are immediately given drugs.  This also shows that the military leaders are aware of how this should not be put upon a child, and how the children can not handle it.  The leaders realize the children can’t even be in their correct state of mind in order to get them to fight.  The children are given drugs to feel powerful and good about themselves.

One last reason that they are victims is that these soldiers can get terrible side affects after the war.  In “Armed and Underage”, it says that the children get terrible side affects after they fight.  Many suffer long-term trauma and have issues that can last for their whole life.  In addition, the drugs given to the child soldiers can cause severe addictions that can be extremely difficult to help.  In the Ishmael Beah video, Beah talked about how long it took him to get even somewhat over his terrible memories of fighting.  For a long time after he left the military, he would see blood coming out of the shower and the sink.  He said that he would have to look at it for a while to realize it was just water.  It is extremely hard for a regular soldier to get over being in battle, let alone a small child.

In conclusion, I believe that child soldiers are definitely victims.  They are unfairly taken advantage of, given drugs, and get terrible trauma from the experience.  The child soldiers do not want to be in the war, but are forced to.  Wars and battles are things that small children should never have to experience.  Yet, so many of them do.  Child soldiers have lasting affects from the war, are drugged, and never even wanted to fight.  Child soldiers are definitely victims.   

Trying to Change

The book, "Beautiful Boy" by David Sheff is about a boy named Nic who deals with many issues in his life.  The main one that this book is about Nic's drug problem.  Nic has been addicted to meth for a very long time.  Even though Nic goes to rehab on and off, he relapses frequently.

But the problem isn't that Nic doesn't want to change, because he does.  And that is part of what makes this book so sad.  He wants to change so bad, and he tries to change really hard.  He realizes how the drugs affect himself and his family.  He has to learn how to change himself for the better.

Mistrust

How would it feel if everything you believed it went upside down?  If the things and people you trusted the most went behinf your baclk and lied to you?  If someone you thought was truly good did something you tha you could never expect even the meanest person to do?  This is what is happening in David Sheff's book "Beautiful Boy."

In this book, David Sheff is writing about his son, Nic.  He used to think that Nic was the most amazing, innocent kid in the world.  But then Nic became a drug addict.  He became to not trust everything he'd ever thought he knew.  Nic was making David mistrust him time and time again.  Nic stole his stepmothers money, then stole things from the house, and even stole his eight year old brother's "life savings" of 8 dollars.  But when Nic tried to give someone a forged check from David's account,David knew that things were getting to the worst, and he really began to distrust Nic.

Beautiful Boy

I am currently reading the heartbreaking book by David Sheff, Beautiful Boy.  This book is a father's story on his son's journey with drugs.  The book starts with the son coming home from college, going to AA meetings, not breaking curfew, reading to his little siblings, and ensuring his parents he is not going to do drugs ever again.  But then, one night, he comes home hours after he should have, and his parents want him to take a drug test.  So, he admits he has been on crystal meth the whole time, and runs away.

Then, the story goes back to when Nic, the son, was just born.  Then the father tells of his troubles with his wife, Nic's mother, how they got divorced, and how he got remarried to someone else, had a son, and then later a daughter.  It talks about Nic's birthday parties, games, summer vacations, and finally, when David found Nic smoking, then when he found marijuana in Nic's bag, and then when Nic got suspended for buying drugs in school.

When Nic's father found the drugs in Nic's bag, it was very hard for him.  He kept thinking back to when Nic was a little kid.  How he would never do anything to break the rules, how he never would have thought of anything like this.  He thought about the time that Nic and his friend got in trouble for throwing away Nic's friend's mother's cigarettes.  How he cringed at the idea of smoking.  And now he had completely changed.

It is really hard for Nic's father to accept that Nic is not the little kid he used to be.  He wants to pass this off as a one-time thing, as a phase.  He wants to believe that Nic is still the innocent boy he once was.  But he's not.  When he catches Nic smoking the first time, he just passes it off.  He decides that it was just a peer-pressure, once in a lifetime occurrence.  But then, he realizes that it's not.

It is really hard for Nic's dad to realize that Nic is growing up and changing.  But it is an important and necessary thing he has to do.  He will not be able to get along thinking that Nic is still the same as he was when he was a toddler.  People change, and David had to learn that Nic will change too.

Even though I am still at the beginning of the book, I think that an important part of the book will be the father's journey in seeing that Nic is changing and growing up, and how he will cope with that fact.