When our daughters were in the sixth and second grade, my husband and I committed the most egregious of all possible sins - we moved them mid-year to a new city. My eldest daughter returned home from the first day at her new school sobbing, and thus confirming that - lest I suffered any illusions to the contrary - I had indeed ruined her life.
     A few weeks later she of course had a handful of new friends.  Just as my opinion of myself as Wonder Mommy was being restored, she came home again in tears. "My friends hate me" she sobbed. "Oh sweetheart," I attempted to reassure her, "they don't hate you, whatever has you thinking such a thing?"
     "They all wrote ABC HATER on their backpacks" she cried, "in black permanent marker" she wailed even louder. (Her name is Ari Brianna Cover, her initials therefore ABC.) Ok, so maybe they do hate her I thought - but fortunately didn't say. Instead, I asked her why she thought they did something so drastic, had she done or said anything she could recall that would inspire such anger.  "No," she choked between words, "I didn't do anything." 
     If tears could make a face fall off, hers was a puddle on the floor; I bypassed the box of tissues and went straight for the roll of toilet paper.  "Well sweetheart," I said while attempting to determine just how much bathroom paper faucet eyes required, "Rest assured, the only ones feeling worse than you right now are them."
     This was not by a mile the reply she anticipated and, therefore, caught her attention - so I continued. "Imagine how bad someone must feel to want to hurt another person's feelings as much as they hurt yours.  What do you think might be going on in their lives to make doing something so mean feel good?"  Visualizing even the possibility of their suffering comforted her measurably. 
      An hour later, we'd worked out a strategy. Ari acknowledged the fact that to defend was the same as to attack, and agreed to return to school and not discuss the girls' actions to anyone. She also agreed to not seek their attention, but be entirely cordial if they spoke to her.   We further agreed that she would go to the Principle's office immediately if at any time she felt her physical safety was threatened. 
     Much to her extreme delight, and most assuredly also mine, the plan worked.  Within three days, one of the girls came to school with ABC Hater blacked out on her backpack.  A week later, another girl spoke to her in the lunch line.  Within two months, they were all back to being friends again.  Following her graduation ceremony at the same school two years later, I found Ari crying again.  "What's the matter sweetheart?" I asked, fearing the worst.  "Oh mommy," she sobbed, "I am going to miss this school so much."


Mama Marlaine
http://www.lifeskillsreportcard.com

This blog is dedicated to all children who are victims of bullying, and all who bully others.




 


Comments

Bill Murray
11/10/2010 11:52

When these horrible bullying suicides happen, it is difficult for me to grasp the enormity of it. At first, I feel that this issue is so complex, so emotionally overwhelming that I feel helpless in the face of it. What can I do? It’s beyond me! I feel like all I can do is to raise my voice with others in outrage, in the hope that together we can make a lasting change. But then the morning comes, and with it the street sweeper. I think I hear my mother calling me.
I guess I find that bullying is not only in a leap from a bridge, or a snapped neck from a hastily improvised noose. I find that it is not just in humiliating someone in front of a bunch of people or bashing their face in an alleyway….I find bullying to be much more subtle than that. The darkness of bullying “comes in on little cats’ feet”. It comes in my whisper, in a word I said or I didn’t say. A glance averted, or a frozen stare. A hand not held….or a hand held. Hell, I bullied David Lynch last week with my rhetoric defending the House of Bishops censure of Bennison. I was at a church function and bullied a woman by sitting with the cool people, rather than sitting with her, an unknown un-cool looking woman sitting alone on a bench, and I didn’t do it on purpose, I did it by default. a priest did sit with her - cool. I doubt that woman knew that I was bullying her – it was just one act lost in a sea of them…that together can make a lasting change. I have bullied out of self-righteousness, and stamped a life forever…..and maybe I’m bullying you right now.
So, if I see a distraught person on the edge of the Coronado Bridge, I will try to talk them down. If I see a person being teased or beaten for who they are, I will try to intervene. But I will also be sure to sit with that lonely woman on the bench.

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I wonder, as that student went to the George Washington Bridge, was it out of fear of meeting those bullies again, being humiliated in front of a bunch of people, the pain of all that – pain so overwhelming that the only solution seemed to be death? Yes, it was that, surely, but I suspect that it was also his looking out the window and seeing a billboard with a man and woman kissing over a bottle of cologne, turning on the radio and hearing songs of boys and girls wanting to hold hands, turning on the TV and seeing sitcoms stereotyping homosexuals in the name of comedy, this, and so much more. Pointing fingers at the classic schoolyard bully working out his or her own issues of dreams unanswered, scolding them, suing their parents, is the easy part. The hard part is reversing social trends that pervade so subtly; the devil is in the details; the challenge is us. I’m not sure how to interpret the confessions of being bullied that the recent suicides have promulgated. We see confessions but not causes – the “not me” defense, as opposed to self-examination. We’ve talked of villains and victims. Maybe it’s time to talk of heroes.

So what do we do? Pass legislation stating that some percent of cologne ads must show same sex couples? License comedians? Require that some percentage of songs on the radio sing about same sex love? Should we have the New York Philharmonic hold a fundraising cocktail party for gays – replete with token gays, like they famously did with the Black Panthers in the 1960’s? How do we bring homosexuality mainstream rather than marginalized? I don’t know. What do you think?

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E.G. Sebastian link
11/16/2010 09:37

Actually... there are more and more movies where "gay" is normal. Personally, I'd not be too happy if we'd have gay songs on the radio or guys singing to each other and touching each other on MTV... or none of the above mentioned "cool" ways that would bring homosexuality to feel more "normal"... However, I believe Hollywood has the power to help us become more accepting.

I was born in a country where they put you to jail if they found out you were gay. It was a big shame. Through meeting many openly gay individuals in the past 20 years, and by seeing dozens of "gay-friendly" movies, I grew to accept "gay" just like another "religion" - they are just different - all power to them! After all, who the heck am I to dictate how someone should live their life. I thought this was the country that's famous about being able to be free and express yourself. Live well and let live!

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renee
01/08/2011 15:09

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