My name is Jose Gilberto Reyna Rodriguez, I was born in Mexico but that is not where I grew up.
I am an immigrant from Mexico who is now a citizen of the United States. This step to a new life was not one taken lightly. Like many other families who move to America, we did so for more financial stability and opportunity. Having been born into relative poverty (relative poverty is when households earn 50% or less than average household incomes) and having a single mother throughout all of my life, we have lived through many struggles.
Some of these struggles have come from our personal decisions while many have been driven by bigger societal issues that we fell victim to.
When I was just a baby, my mom came to America from Mexico to start working so that the citizenship process could start for her and her kids. Looking to give her kids a better life with more opportunities, such as a better education, higher wages and more employment opportunities, along with a higher standard of living. She decided to say goodbye to everything and everyone she knew to start a new life, with 3 kids (all babies).
This has been a lifelong challenge my family has dealt with. As you can imagine, the ability for a single parent to look after three children financially, emotionally and physically (their presence) what does this mean? is difficult to provide when the person is new to a country where they don’t speak the language, where they don’t have any more than two family members to support them and their college degrees aren’t considered valid forcing them to work 2 to 3 jobs to make ends meet. This is a wider phenomenon in America as Having been born into relative poverty, these conditions were the foundation for the challenges my family would have to face.
As of 2022, more than 20% of households in the U.S. make less than 35,000 a year; many immigrants like my mother fall into this group. And this includes millions (what is the true number?) of other individuals who likely struggle to meet the most basic needs. With the percentage of people who work more than 1 job officially being 5-6%. This leads to households where parents don’t have time to spend with their children.
So my life growing up, as you can imagine, was quite difficult, as unfortunately for those who don’t have it “money makes the world go around.” School was more difficult than it could’ve been for me and my siblings as we didn’t have support at home because mom had to work to make ends meet. A phenomenon known as being a latchkey child. “A latchkey kid, or latchkey child, is a child who returns to an empty home after school or a child who is often left at home with no supervision because their parents are away at work. Such a child can be any age, alone or with siblings who are also under the age of majority for their community.”
Studies show that nearly 30 percent of all children younger than 14 years of age care for themselves or are cared for by older siblings during nonschool hours. One study Published September 7, 2023, showed that today there are around 7.7 million latchkey kids in the U.S.—double the count in 2000.(does this need quotation marks?) One in five children come home to an empty house after school. Needless to say I believe that it is an issue we should attempt to address from the root.
In elementary school, I performed really well as I went to an after school program that would help with school work. While I was in middle school, a lot of personal challenges developed and existing ones hit a breaking point. As I mentioned, I have had a single mother throughout my life, this is because my dad chose to leave my mom when I was just 3 weeks old. Unfortunately I grew up with my siblings telling me it was because I was born and that I shouldn’t have been as a result.
That thought stuck with me and was made worse when my mother experienced domestic violence from a partner who was my closest father figure. This all went on while I was a child, I internalized that it was my fault my dad left my family and that my family wouldn’t have gone through what we did with that partner if it wasn’t for me.
Having internalized this for years, I began to develop serious mental health issues culminating during middle school such as depression, anxiety, and high stress. This led me to unfortunately like many other students, to seriously consider suicide. An issue that has been getting worse around the country as studies show 1 in 5 teens have seriously considered suicide.
To deal with these mental health issues I started to use drugs and I basically stopped going to school. Sluffing every day 1 class or more, or not going to school at all. It was the first time in my life that I wasn’t doing well in school. Having been one of the best students while I was in elementary school, it was the exact opposite of what my family had come to expect of me.
I had checked all the boxes for being an at risk student. An at-risk student describes a student or groups of students who are likely to fail or drop out of their school. Many students are labeled “at-risk” because of their social backgrounds. Students who come from low-economic homes, have a minority status, or have language barriers, are often labeled. These students (may) have issues like frequent tardiness or absences, disruptive behavior, low grades at the beginning of the semester, and declining grades.
Well. I had all all these checkboxes checked.
References
Latchkey Kids | Office of Justice Programs
Unlocking Independence Safely: A Guide for Parents of Latchkey Kids
https://www.safewise.com › news › unlocking-independe…
Office of Justice Programs (.gov)
https://www.ojp.gov › ncjrs › virtual-library › abstracts
Americans have two jobs or more, a sign of inflation’s burden
https://www.usatoday.com › story › money › 2023/11/03
More than 20% of teens have seriously considered suicide. …
The Hoot 
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