I spend a lot of time listening to WCCO radio, especially when I’m going to sleep and when I first get up in the morning. For those of you not in Minnesota, WCCO is the local CBS affiliate, both on TV and on the AM dial. Anyway, lately the topic of school bullying has been coming up a lot. If it’s not on in the daytime, it’s on at night, if it’s not on at night, then it pops up in the form of yet another school incident, and so on. Of course, school bullying is nothing new. It wasn’t when I was in school, or my parents, or grandparents, either. The reason I bring it up here, though, is that inevitably, the radio host always eventually asks for caller opinions that they play out on air. Have to keep the discussion going, right?
Now, myself, I don’t have kids. I doubt that I ever will, and in any case, I find that the older I get, the less I can stand being around them. It’s not that there’s really anything wrong with children, mind you. Children can be a great joy and blessing… just not when they’re within earshot of me. I dunno what it is, but what most people find cute, adorable and innocent about children, especially young children, I tend to find annoying, obnoxious, and NOISY!! It’s a clash of personalities, really, mine versus the fact that most children just haven’t matured enough to have one. They’re still growing, they have to try out every possible way to drive you insane, rather than just working on perfecting a few particularly well honed skills.
Still, I do find myself thinking about what I might say or do for my hypothetical children should I ever find myself with one or six. Parenthood has to start somewhere, and if you wait until the bun is baking in the oven, you’re already way behind – at least, that’s the way I’ve always felt. You want to have hopes and dreams for your 3.whatever children, but there’s some practical thinking that needs to be done too, right?
I suppose it’s that writer’s mind of mine again, always churning away, always making something boil over on the back burner. Sometimes I think it’d be nice if I could turn the knob down from “high” back there, but unfortunately my skull didn’t come equipped with temperature dials.
Anyway, like I said, the topic of bullying has been coming up a lot lately, and I keep hearing parents saying pretty much the same thing, over and over. They don’t want their children to fight. They expect the teachers to stop it. The school districts need to do more to prevent bullying. The kids should just ignore it, because the bullies are just sad, unloved people that want attention.
You know what I’ve noticed, though? Nobody seems to want to be the one to say, “Stop.” Bullies survive on one very simple principle, the simple fact that nobody is willing to stand up to them and make them stop. The schools most certainly don’t want to do it. What’s that, you fascist teacher, you dare to tell my little Johnny to stop pestering that fat kid? It’s not your job to raise my little Johnny! It’s just a little harmless teasing, you leave him alone or I’ll see to it your teaching license is revoked and you up on charges for abusing my little Johnny’s rights!! Parents don’t want to do it because no parent wants to believe their little bundle of joy could be anything other than perfect.
Back here in the real world, though, the bullies trundle merrily along, stealing lunch money and generally making the world hell for those that don’t know how to stand up for themselves. I dealt with my share of them when I was a kid, and I can’t say that I always handled them perfectly. I made my mistakes, but I had some victories too, and that’s something to draw from. But what would I tell my hypothetical child, based on those experiences?
After thinking about it for awhile, I’ve come up with something I think I’d be comfortable telling my kids. The first thing I’d tell them is that I expected them to exhaust every option they had for ending the conflict peacefully. That means telling the bully to stop in no uncertain terms, that means reporting the problem to teachers or the school police liaison if needs be, that means telling me so that I can call the school and make my concerns known.
Sometimes, though, there’s just no ending a conflict peacefully. I learned that for myself, after all, and I learned it the hard way, so, there’s something else I’d tell my child. I’d tell them that if all else failed – if diplomacy didn’t work, if the teachers wouldn’t step in, if the pressure of an angry parent wasn’t enough… I’d tell them that they had my permission and blessing to stand up and make a fight of it, if that’s what they really felt was needed to put an end to it. There’s a catch, though, as I hear gasps at the idea of using physical violence to fight violence. There’s a big catch.
You see, what I learned, dealing with my own bullies, is that sometimes the only option you have left is to turn that cold shoulder, ball your hand into a fist, and give the bully a black eye that can be seen from half a block away. And I had to do it more than a couple times before the bullies finally got the hint that trying to push me around, in the long run, was only going to wind up hurting them – literally. However, I also walked straight to the admin office each time, and turned myself in for my punishment, because fighting does mean getting a punishment.
That’s what I’d tell my children, too. If they honestly and truly felt that was the only way, then they could… but that they would have to stand and accept the consequences too. If that meant that I would have to take a day or a week off from work to stay with them while they served an out of school suspension, well, guess what? That’s my job. I’m a parent, and it’s my JOB, and my privilege to raise my children right, and to make sure that they’re properly disciplined if they do something wrong. I’d look their teacher or their principal right in the eye and tell them the exact same thing, too, and one more thing… That I couldn’t be more proud of my children for saying enough and defending themselves after exhausting the “right” options if I tried.
In an ideal world, bullies just wouldn’t exist. It’d never enter our minds that we could gain power by tormenting those around us. Unfortunately, as most have noticed, this is far from an ideal world, and honestly, I’m not sure I’d want to live in an ideal world anyway. In this world, bullies are here to stay… but that doesn’t mean we all couldn’t do a better job of telling them to stop. Maybe that means I tread on the toes of their parents, the ones that are too busy complaining about others raising their children to actually raise their children. Maybe that means my children have to resort to turning the tables on the bully and giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Food for thought.
Recent Comments