Bullying Will Continue Until Morale Improves

We have been hearing tons about the bullying that goes on among kids for some time.  There are numerous stories on the internet, in print, and on television about kids who are bullied and how bullying is horrible and traumatic and we should not allow it to happen.  Our children will be scarred for life, and all sorts of calamities will occur, we're told.  Suicides have happened, with teens and children so devastated by how they are treated by their peers that they take their own lives. 

It is a problem, but we are trying to solve it. Bullying programs, designed to provide students with the tools they need to deal with bullies and their minions, are in place all over the country. Parents are up in arms the second they believe their child is being bullied; lawsuits over bullying are filed even before the ink is dry on a discipline referral. There are tons of expensive instructional programs out there that schools use to help with the problem. 

Kids do still bully each other, despite all our attempts to eradicate it. Why is this? Sometimes I am sitting in on a  parent meeting and the subject of bullying may come up.  That's when I usually hear a parent make the comment "I don't know where my son/daughter learned that behavior."  I want to speak up so badly that my jaw hurts.

Yes you do know, Mom. 

Because bullying is not just a problem for kids.  

Turn on the news.  Donald Trump calling other people names, making disparaging comments about women?   Ted Cruz threatening to shut down the government if he doesn't get his way? Vladmir Putin walking in and "annexing" Crimea, following it up with attempts to acquire more of Ukraine?  All the threats/violence/terrorist attacks over Planned Parenthood?  That cowardly(if you're proud of what you're doing, you don't wear a mask) group in the Middle East threatening to blow up this or destroy that?  That's bullying.

Walk into your office. Does your boss tell you that you "should just be grateful we gave you this job"?  Do your coworkers go to lunch and purposely exclude you? Do they roll their eyes when you speak?  That's bullying.  A few weeks ago two of my colleagues decided to 'gang up' on me. They did not want to take 'no' for an answer.  I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach, like someone was about to punch me. I've had years of dealing with bullying, both as a kid and as an adult, so I handled it. It was not a touchy-feely moment.

The real world, the one beyond education, is full of bullying, only there's no teacher or principal to step in and intervene.  Our children are going to grow up and be out there in that world some day.  Children look to us to figure out how to behave, and what are we doing?  All the research based interventions in the world can't halt vicarious learning. Glorifying people like Trump and Cruz, labeling their namecalling and threats something to be proud of instead of ashamed. Putting them on the news every night, just to get ratings.  What does that say about us?  How can we expect a higher standard of behavior from kids, when the adults can't even get it right?

We can't. 

I don't really know the answer, or if there even is one out there.  I'm used to standing up to bullies after a lifetime of experience, but I'll be the first person to say that my way is not always the correct way.  But nothing is going to change as long as we allow this bad behavior from the adults out there to continue.  As long as people keep showing up to celebrate people like Donald Trump, holding him up as an example of a good businessman, there will be kids who copy that behavior. 

And we will have to deal with the consequences.

Getting Some Rants Off

You could say that 2012 was, to quote Dickens, the best of the times and the worst of times.  You could probably say that about every year, I bet, but I do like that quote. I could do some navel gazing about the past year, I suppose  I had a great year blogging.  I met a few people in the bloggysphere who I think the world of, and I've been able to participate in some great writing communities, such as Write On Edge and Trifecta.  I think that my writing skills have significantly improved thanks to the critiques and the comments of my fellow writers.  I certainly have felt more confident about trying new things, and I hope that I continue to learn and grow.

But today is the day for me to get some of the rants off my bloggy plate.  I often started a blog post with a rant about particular things.  I get riled up, as the saying goes.  But inevitably, I cool off, or get outraged about something else.  Eventually I have to turn off the television and stop watching the news.  So here are a few random rants.  I'm getting them off of my chest, setting them free, yada, yada, yada.  This way I can start the new year off with other stuff to rant about.  Lord knows there's always something to get riled up about!

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If my wish for a super power came true, and I had had the ability to psychically smack people upside the head, I would have been mentally slapping people left and right during the election.  People lost their minds, posting stuff on Facebook about Obama.  Most of it was barely concealed ignorant tripe or scare tactics that often bordered on blatant racism.  There is no place for racism in this day and age, and people who perpetuated it should be called on it.  Bring that hatred into the light of day and kill it dead.  And all that dung about Obama not being an American citizen?  That was downright insulting to my intelligence.  The whole election seemed to drain IQ points from the masses, if what was posted on Facebook was any indication.  Don't even get me started about Twitter. 

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I won't miss the NRA and their shenanigans.  I wish that they were gone, but they'll certainly recover from their sudden unpopularity because they throw stupid gobs of money at Washington.  There's been way too much innocent blood poured out over the last year for anyone to be standing behind the NRA anymore.  It's an antiquated organization that refuses to change with the times, and it therefore needs to die a quiet death in a corner and be buried like cat poop.  We as a nation should be embarrassed by the NRA, and shun it completely.  Yes, the Second Amendment says that a citizen has the right to bear arms.  The Second Amendment does not say a word about a citizen having an AK-47 or an assault rifle. 

Common sense gun control isn't about taking all the guns away, and people need to stop responding in a knee jerk fashion about it.  There's not a darn thing wrong with having a background check before you are allowed to buy a gun. What possible reason would a law-abiding person need to have a gun immediately, where they couldn't wait?   There's not a darn thing wrong with limiting the types of working guns that a person can own.  I can see no reason for anyone who is not in the military or law enforcement to own an assault rifle.   There is certainly not a darn thing wrong with having a national registry of gun owners available to law enforcement.  If your gun is stolen, wouldn't you like to know if it ends up being used in a crime?  

I don't own a gun, and I have no intention of owning a gun.  Well, maybe a shotgun, to shoot rock salt at the random Kirby vacuum representative who shows up at my door every week.  However, I think that owning a handgun creates a false sense of security and an illusion of power that doesn't actually exist. I refuse to drink that Kool-aid.   Most of my friends and family members own guns, however, and that's okay with me. I also don't care if my family or neighbors have guns; if the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be hanging out with my neighbors in the cul de sac for a modicum of protection. 

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Bullying is a huge topic this year.  All these kids are being bullied, I hear, and we must stop it.  Great.  I am all on board with helping kids.  But what about the adults who are bullied?  What about the bullies on the evening news, the ones screaming that if you don't agree with them then you are evil personified?  Doesn't that church in Kansas, the one that pickets the funerals of soldiers, qualify as a bully of a sort?  What about the 'volleyball moms' who deliberately leave a couple of kids' names off of a 'championship' t-shirt, to make those girls feel excluded?  What about a boss who screams at an employee or tells them that they should just feel lucky to have a job?  Doesn't that qualify as bullying?  What good is it for use to tell children not to bully? Vicarious learning is extremely powerful.  The kids do what they see us do.  If your child sees you do it, it must be okay.  I say that we need to take care of ourselves, get out own lives in order, per the bullying, before we get hyper focused on the lives of our kids. 

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Why is the Westboro Baptist Church even warranting any newsprint or mentions anywhere?  This is most certainly a hate group--they probably would tell you that themselves.  To badger people who have been dealt a significant blow--the death of a loved one--by saying that they deserved to die is heinous.  Yes, they are a church, and the First Amendment gives them rights to speak their minds.  But they preach hatred, not love.  They certainly are not Christians, and should be disavowed by all religions.  I am sure that this group craves attention, and they get it from picketing funerals and then slapping lawsuits onto people who try to keep them from being there.  So quit giving them attention.  Stop referring to them by name, stop filming them.  Don't give them air time at all.  The lack of publicity would kill them by suffocating the 'cash' cow.  So stop giving them that attention.  Starve them of it.  Let them be a candle placed in a jar with the lid welded on, so that the flame of their hatred sputters and is extinguished. 


That's it.  I got most of my rants out.  The rest I deleted.  I will start fresh in 2013.  Happy New Year, everyone!  I wish all of you a happy, prosperous, and exciting(in a good way) 2013. 

Zero Tolerance

Zane is speeding on a collision course with actual school.  He will start kindergarten next year.  I want him to make friends, and get along with his teachers and learn as much as he can.  I do not want him to be teased, or picked on, or told he is weird because he is different.  I want Zane to treat others with respect, peers and teachers alike, and I want others to treat him with the same respect. In other words, I do not want my son to be bullied or to be a bully.  At the same time, I want him to know that he doesn't have to meekly accept being treated that way; he does have options, which should only involve fisticuffs as a last resort. Any child should be allowed to defend themselves, if necessary.

Schools all over are preaching a no bullying mantra to all students.  No bullying, teachers say to students.  No bullying, kids say to other kids.  Although I think that this current attempt is laudable in many ways, I don't think that it will be very effective in the long run.  You can talk to kids until you are blue in the face about respect and bullying, but they will do what they see adults do, not what they say. 

How many people in the current workforce have been bullied by their boss?  How many have been yelled at, or made to feel less than, by someone above their pay grade? How many people have been told "You should be thankful that you have a job" when their workload triples?   How many people have been talked down to or belittled at work?  Why is it okay to allow bullying in the workplace?  Why is it okay for an administrator to call a teacher into his office and threaten them with job loss if their students don't score well on state assessments?  Why is it okay for an employee to be forced into a pay cut, and told he should just be grateful that he has a job? 

For that matter, why is it okay for Rush Limbaugh to make a living out of bullying?  Because that's what he does--he's a bully.  He doesn't actually have to come up with any original thoughts.  If Limbaugh, or others like him, don't like what another person, such as the President, has to say, they call them names and harangue them instead of arguing in the rational manner of intelligent people.  The Governor of Wisconsin essentially bullied people to get what he wanted; other governors have done the same, and nobody has called them on the carpet for it. 

The political extremism that exists in this country, at its heart, is pure bullying behavior.  This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but the message has always been the same.  If you don't believe what I believe, you are less, you are other, and I can do whatever I want to you in the name of my political party/my religion.   If my party wins, I can cut the funding for the projects you considered to be important as retaliation; if my party loses, I can spend the next four years making life miserable by fighting every single bill that might make any sort of difference.  I am convinced that all the vitriol about Obama's healthcare law has little to do with actual facts and more to do with retaliation for getting the bill passed in the first place.

Kids are exposed to this.  Kids hear their parents calling the President of the United States names that aren't very nice.  Kids hear their parents talking about what their boss called them that day.    Older kids may watch the news and other programs, and hear politicians hurling insults at each other.  What they hear and see doesn't jibe with what they've been told at school.  Since it's okay for Mom and Dad to call other people names and it's okay for politicians to scream at each other, many children will reason,  that this behavior must be okay.   How can we hold children accountable for bullying behavior when no one is holding the adults around them accountable? 

If we truly want bullying behavior to end, if we truly want a more respectful climate in the work world and in politics, then we need to hold everyone accountable for bullying and not just when they are at school.  That means no more tuning in to hear Rush call someone else a slut.   No more doing whatever you want to others just because you can.  We cannot expect our children to 'do as we say' and not do as we do.  We have to show them that we, as parents, will not accept bullying behavior from anyone. If there are friends or family members in your life who are negative and bullying, stop associating with them.  If you attend a church where the pastor spews hatred toward others, find a new church. If we stop giving money to politicians who are bullies, if we stop listening to Rush Limbaugh, if we start giving money to more positive causes, that will get the ball rolling.  We can also start treating each other with more respect.  These are little things, but each drop in the bucket brings it closer to overflowing. 

Some Thoughts on Bullying

When we were kids, my brother and I were often bullied by other kids. We were always the new kids, and as such were teased and tormented by our peers. That was just the way it was back then, and while we fought like cats and dogs with each other, when you picked on one of us, you had to contend with both of us. Family sticks together, especially when you're an Army brat who moves often. We sometimes had to physically fight, but most of the time we just had to deal with exclusion, ignoring, teasing, or other events that were just as harmful. For instance, some boys buried my brother in a box in the back yard of the apartment building in which we lived; he went along with it because he wanted them to like him. In my own case, a group of girls knocked me down one day when I was wearing a dress and gave me a wedgie.

We were visiting my brother's house a few weeks ago, which seems to be the place for everyone to meet. Zane was having a blast, running around, playing in the back yard, etc. Being a happy three year old. He decided that he wanted to go upstairs and find his cousin Tristan. I followed Zane up the stairs several steps behind to make sure that he got up there okay; while I was on the stairs, I could hear voices talking and laughing. The second Zane got to the top of the stairs, there was dead silence. That got my attention; silence is not a normal occurrence at my brother's house. I had to investigate.

It took me a second to realize that MY child was being specifically excluded from this particular gathering. These kids didn't want to play with my son, but rather than tell him that in some form or fashion, they were excluding him by pretending to be asleep. That exclusion, if it happened at school, would have been called indirect bullying. I was angry, hurt, and horrified to realize that my son was experiencing bullying at three years of age. I never expected that someone would be deliberately cruel to my child, but there it was, a big, stinking pile of it. I was so horrified/angry that I was shaking. It was as if I was reliving all those moments years ago when I was excluded as the "weird" kid. And I felt helpless. After all the things I try to do to protect my child, it didn't mean a damn thing.

Once I calmed down, I started thinking. Tristan is your average, garden-variety teenager. He is a good person. He's generally polite, if monosyllabic around adults. Tristan has spent hours playing with Zane, teaching him how to play soccer. He doesn't get into trouble for anything except forgetting his chores and forgetting his homework. Yet here Tristan is, engaging in bullying. Bullying behavior seems to be pervasive.

Our new kitten has a habit of attacking our ankles and legs when we walk past her, and I have lots of little cuts and scratches on my legs as a result. My husband and I joke about a "death by a thousand cuts" from her attacks. Bullying is like that, I think. Death by a thousand cuts--a thousand moments of teasing, exclusions, and threats. A person dies a little every time they are bullied--if they can't defend themselves against it. I am not talking about violence, I am talking about resilience. Being able to pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off, and go on about your day and not letting the bullying emotionally beat you down. We seem to be focusing so much on the bullying itself that we aren't working on the very survival skills a kid needs to handle being bullied. I wish that wasn't so. The fact of the matter is that we as parents cannot be there every single second of the day to shelter and protect our children; they need to be able to handle this on their own. And we have our own bullies to deal with, be it our boss, a coworker, a parent, or that police officer who pulled us over for a bad brakelight this morning. It is in watching us that our children learn the most about what they will face as adults. How do they see us dealing with the bullies in our life?

My brother and I survived the bullying over the years because we were smart and, more importantly, resilient. I personally made a decision to never to define myself as a victim, and I began to shrug those feelings off like an old coat that no longer fit. That does not mean that I don't remember what it was like to be bullied; it means that I can handle being bullied. And make no mistake--bullying behavior happens everywhere, every day, every place. You can let it get to you, or you can let it roll off of you like water, right into the gutter where it belongs. That's what I want to teach my son.

Oh, and those girls in fifth grade who gave me a wedgie? I got up, walked about ten feet away from them, and smiled as sweetly as I could through my tears. Then I mooned them. And ran as fast as I could, laughing, all the way home.