the sad things

i found out a number of these today:
- one kid was gone most of last week because of a death in the family. i found out today when he gave me the funeral service notice that it wasn't a random great aunt or something - it was his brother's baby, who never made it out of the hospital. the card has a teddy bear on it. one kid started giving him a hard time thinking he was joking about why he was gone, then the poor kid snapped.
- another kid's dad moved out yesterday. the dad thinks the mom "had another man in the house," according to my student, who told me ALL the details, from what was said, the suspicions, and what the kid thought. this kid had a particularly rough day today.
- yet another student wrote me a note about how he spend the weekend with his mom. i know for a fact that she has been in and out of drug rehab for her whole life, left him in the hospital when he was born, and he has never lived with her. she apparently lives somewhere with two other sons. he watched the dvd of james and the giant peach and was in absolute heaven. heart-warming and -breaking all at the same time.
- another kid (the one who lost the shoe) ran her mouth from the *moment* that shoe was discovered missing to the moment i pulled up in front of her house (total: 1 hour or so) about how she was gonna see the belt about this, about what her dad would do, about the fights her parents get in ...

it helps me understand why they are the way they are, but it doesn't make it any easier ...