Like every other teenager, Liam loved good food and soccer.
He’d spent most of his day with his friends, riding bikes and enjoying his life.
So when he told his mom that he didn’t want to use his phone anymore, she got alarmed and started monitoring her boy closely.
Liam quit going to his friend’s place on his bike and stopped hanging out with his buddies.
He also abandoned soccer and, on top of all this, his eating routine totally reversed. The boy, who once used to eat anything edible, started eating the minimum required to stay alive.
“I was determined to get to the bottom of my son’s sudden and severe dismissal of his former passions, but he was so secretive and closed off,” his mom Deirdre wrote in a piece for The Well.
Things continued getting worse for Liam and finally one day, he refused to even go to school. It was when his mother decided to have a talk with him regarding what was wrong.
Both he and his mother were moved to tears when Liam told her that he was a victim of bullying at school. “I asked how often they did this to him. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Every day, Mom,’” she said.
Liam’s story was filled with so much cruelty that one can hardly believe it came from a bunch of middle school kids.
Like any mother, Deirdre was heartbroken and in immense pain. The bullies told innocent Liam that he “sucked” and that he would never make it to the soccer team.
They called him names, passed indecent remarks on him and even physically mistreated him, sometimes telling him to kill himself. This was going on for no lesser than a whole year.
Deirdre and other members of Liam’s family took immediate action but the response of the school and the bullies’ parents was very disappointing.
The parents refused to take any responsibility for their children’s actions and the school never did anything about them.
Liam had to be placed on a heart monitor and a feeding tube to help him recover from the malnutrition he faced due to his eating disorder.
He also had to undergo therapy to help him get out of his depression and eating disorder. Liam was hospitalized at an intensive care facility for ten weeks.
Deirdre was not only sad and worried about her son’s condition but was also disappointed at the response of the school administration and the parents of the children who were responsible for her son’s condition.
“I felt like I needed to shout Liam’s story from the rooftops,” Deirdre said. She chose to take the help of social media to get help for her son that he deserved.
“The words just fell out of me. It was cathartic. I read it over and over to myself and hit send,” she said. Her posts went viral on social media.
People started the hashtag #WeStandWithLiam and made shirts and bumper stickers in support of the brave boy.
All the support and encouragement from people played a key role in Liam’s recovery from the deep and dark depression.
Proving to be a brave little boy, Liam not only recovered from depression but also decided to go back to the same school and finish the soccer season.
His mom was immensely proud to see her son walking past the doors of his school.
Liam’s story teaches us that if you notice anything unusual about your child, talk to them before it is too late.
Replaced!