Raising Richmond: Bullying
Bullying is making headlines lately. Whether it’s actually on the rise or just seems that way because of all of the recent media attention, it’s time to talk about it. For some families, it’s a matter of life and death. So here we go…
Editor’s note: Today’s feature is the newest installment of our parenting column written by two sets of Richmonders: Jorge and Patience Salgado (veteran parents of four gorgeous children), and Ross and Valerie Catrow (new-ish parents of a lively and opinionated toddler). Check back fortnightly to watch them discuss/agree/disagree/throw down over all kinds of parenting issues, Richmond-related and beyond.
If you pay any attention to the news, the following scenarios will probably sound familiar:
Tyler Clementi, 18, committed suicide after his roommate at Rutgers publicly outed him by allegedly posting video of him engaging in sexual activity with another male. That same month, Asher Brown, 13, Seth Walsh, also 13, and Billy Lucs, 15, also committed suicide, allegedly due to being taunted about their homosexuality.
Phoeboe Prince, 15, hung herself after being bullied for several months by classmates at her high school in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
James Willie Jones of Florida has been charged with disorderly conduct for storming onto a school bus and threatened students who had apparently been bullying his daughter, a 13-year-old with cerebral palsy.
Bullying is making headlines lately. Whether it’s actually on the rise or just seems that way because of all of the recent media attention, it’s time to talk about it. For some families, it’s a matter of life and death. So here we go…
Today’s question: What are your thoughts on bullying?
The Salgados
I gathered my boys onto the couch and tucked one under each arm tightly. “Boys, we need to make a pact right now!” I said. Their eyes were as wide as saucers as I told them the recent story of Seth Walsh, the California 13-year-old who committed suicide after being bullied for being gay.
So much of the problem is kids not being able to access or get the support they need, kids holding and enduring things they were never meant to hold during an already vulnerable growing time.
“Kids need each other and they need to know they can get help if they need it. You guys have to promise you will come to Papa and me if you ever feel scared, if someone treats you unkindly or their power feels so big in a hurtful way.” I said.
“We will mom,” they replied and then we were quiet because it felt like the only appropriate response in the moment.
It was only a year ago that we had our own mini-experience with bullying. Josiah had expressed some concern over his desk being moved close to a particular classmate. This kid is usually pretty socially savvy and gets along with almost anyone, so his anxious feeling should have been my first big red flag.
A couple weeks later, it seems Josiah had reached his breaking point for being picked on.
“I tried to tell her I don’t care….but…” he burst into tears.
“But you do care right?” I said. He nodded his head through his tears. ”Everyone cares Josiah, trust me.” I replied. ”Do you think there is something wrong with you?” I asked, he shook his head but cried a little harder.
There are times when you just can’t protect your child, and someone else’s pain will hurt them. I told him I thought maybe he was dealing with a bully and suggested we find out some more information so we could make a plan to help him. We spent some time researching and found out why this might be happening to him and what we could do.
Bullying is either about power or passing on some form of mistreatment. We wondered together if that might be the cause for this girl being unkind. We talked about how sometimes when you hear negative messages repeatedly you can start to believe them. It was time for truth to do her magic I told him, because truth is the only thing that can set you free. If he was starting to question himself, maybe his bully can’t remember the truth at all.
We came up with a strategy: how he should respond or not respond, contacted the teacher, made little cards reminding him of the truth of himself and the situation and made a plan to check back in together in a few days. Within a week, things were much better. It seemed more than anything, he needed to know his voice could create the change he needed, that he wasn’t in it alone but was capable of finding a way through.
While our situation was mild and I have no idea what lies ahead, I am aware this problem is growing in our society. Bullying isn’t anything new but are kids meaner in today’s world? What do you think?
The Catrows
I think I was only bullied one time. This chubby kid with a dumb haircut kept hassling me… so I eventually gave him the ol’ karate chop to the neck. That’s is how you deal with a bully, folks! Just kidding. I was in so much effing trouble after that — it never happened again. Henceforth, I relied on my charm and quick wit to escape the bully’s wrath.
Honestly though, my wife Valerie and I were never really bullied much as children (due either to our acute likeability or our shared tendency to just stay out of any and all drama) so I don’t really know if we have any sage advice to offer. I know that handling things with karate chops, nunchaku, or any other violence is not the way to go about things. But what is? What do we do if our son JR is bullied?
Well, adults have to be adults. Part of my responsibility as JR’s father is to be “there” for him if any of these bullying shenanigans go down. Not only do I need to listen to him and help him work through any issues he may be having, but I need be ever vigilant, spotting signs of bullying if he doesn’t feel able to talk about it. I’d hope other adults in his life — his friends’ parents, adults at church, his teachers, etc. — would have a similar mindset and let us know if anything is going on. We’ll naturally do the same for the other kids we’re around on a regular basis; it takes a village, you know.
But what if JR ends up on the dishing-out end of a bullying relationship? As parents, that is one of our biggest fears; we are so NOT bullies, so uninterested in confrontation, we’re not sure we’d know what to do with a child who seeks it out. Hopefully we won’t get to that point. On the practical, concrete level, one of the most important qualities we’re trying to instill in our Padawan is politeness: we expect to hear please, thank you, excuse me and (most importantly) I’m sorry if he’s done something wrong. And, if you’re a bully, you’re hardly an epitome of Miss Manners.
But when it comes down to the nitty gritty stuff…I dunno guys, I dunno.
One thing we can do is make sure our familial relationships are positive and healthy. At nearly two, our little guy is a MENTAL SPONGE, and is soaking up our bad behaviors left and right. If we show him how to be kind to other people, hopefully it will soak in. Right?
Other than that, I’m not sure, AND IT IS TERRIFYING.
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
living well is the best revenge…
I wonder if part of the problem is that kids have more *ways* to bully these days. Facebook didn’t come around until I was already in college (maybe even out of college?) and texting hadn’t really become a thing until around that time.
I have no idea what to do about this problem, but I do know that it scares the crap out of me.
Problem is there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I don’t know if there’s NOTHING you can do about it. Clearly Patience and her son were able to address it in their situation.
One thing that gets on my nerves is when people say that bullies have low self esteem. I think that might be true for some, but a good number of the bullies that I’ve seen (both when I was in school and when I was a teacher) were raised to think they could do no wrong. That’s a recipe for disaster.
The word “bullying” is too limiting. People write it off as harmless stolen lunch money or getting punched in the stomach. Think back to when you were in school. Who hasn’t been really distraught from getting teased over something that felt huge at the time? Who hasn’t dished it out because of their own insecurities. Kids can be really mean, especially when they’ve got a clique to back them or a crowd to impress. Although we try to shape our kids values and instill healthy self-esteem, their peers will give them emotional scars to last a lifetime (and good memories too, of course). I think parents, teachers, and school administrators need to take more initiative to counsel kids about the long-term consequences of mistreating others. And for god’s sake interrupt a pattern when you see one. Not being taken seriously when you complain to adults is often worse than the bullying. What might seem like the necessary evil of social competition can really do serious damage.
I was the nerdy kid in school (shocking, I know), and was the subject of teasing and bullying for the better part of ten years. I never learned how to deal with it at a young age; my mother offered a consoling hug, a shoulder to lean on and a “just ignore them” when i talked about the pain I endured at school, wanting to run away, or worse. It never made the harrassment stop, though, and I never really learned how to stand up for myself. There are definitely times when I felt, like Jason mentioned, that I just wasn’t taken seriously.
I sought some refuge through spending time with my teachers; it offered me some protection from my peers and fed my desire to learn at the same time. I never really talked to them about the extent to which I felt abused, simply because I didn’t want to appear even weaker in the eyes of my classmates.
It led to me spending most of the following ten years dealing with depression and social anxiety, severe at times, and I almost because another name like Tyler, Asher, Seth, Billy, Phoebe, and James. It’s something that is difficult for me to talk about to this day. I seem pretty well-adjusted now, but I haven’t always been this way.
I just turned 29, which means that I’ve spent about two thirds of my life dealing with bullying or the after-effects in some form or another. If it were to happen to my kid tomorrow, I’m still not sure how I would deal with it.
Thanks for sharing all of that, Dan. I think your comment shows that it is a very real problem. I think Jason is so right in his comments about how damaging it can be when adults don’t take you seriously. If you are being made to feel unsafe or harassed, it is a problem that needs to be addressed.
I’d love to hear from some teachers out there (as my experience was limited to 10-year-olds and I’ve been out of the classroom for three years). Do you feel like you’ve been given enough training and resources to deal with this? What are you seeing in the schools?
I think bullying was a huge part of my development (in a negative way, obviously). I was bullied and as a result I bullied others. My parents NEVER expressed any propensity toward violence or unmitigated anger at home and I can honestly say all of my involvement with student to student abuse was just that, perpetrated and perpetuated by kids. My classmates, kids on my block, and mostly my cousins.
Our son’s birth is imminent, and obviously we have years before this is a problem. But if there’s anything I can draw from my own experience I would say that it would be to watch out for an attitude of exclusion with my child.
I loved and trusted my parents, but from a scary-young age I had this mentality of “what happens on the playground/lot/block stays there” and it’s not acceptable to involve the grown-ups. That was the destructive element in my young mind. I certainly didn’t get it from my parents, I won’t say that the Ghostbusters taught it to me, but it was a thing so watch out for it parents.
My son is 2 now and we see definate bullying in his class. It is normal for kids that young to spat over a wanted toy, but there are 2 kids that are definate bullies. Cornering kids, hitting or pushing othere down for no reason, etc. Sure it could be a cry for attention, but isn’t that what most bullies are after superiority and attention? I am also a fan of manners. My son is a manners monster and I love it. I am also trying to get him to ask for help in whatever situation to keep dialogue open so that in the future he has the coping tools to handle tough situations. It’s hard to think of being hands off and not fighting my son’s battles like a momma bear should, but I know he will need to learn to deal with minor situations, I just hate that he us having to deal with it at 2 years of age.
The role of social media in teen suicide has more to do with awareness, and a paper trail then a causal relationship between so called cyber bullying and teen suicide. According to the CDC teen suicide has actually decreased very slightly since 1991. The reason this is becoming a hot button issue right now has more to do with the transparency of teen lives in the past decade. In 1991 bullying would have been physical and verbal almost exclusively, but in 2010 there are emails, text messages, and chat logs to chronicle the bullying. Bullying is part of the childhood experience and it will always exist; the above posts and the article are spot on when they focus on how we help our children understand and deal with these incidents.
Patience,
What a practical and loving way to help your son deal with bullies. You make the best mom, and I learn from and respect your thoughts on parenting so much, even if I may never become one myself.
Thanks Holly! Although, I gotta tell you I’m with Ross on this one, bullying scares the bejeezus out of me.
It’s just the thought that kids like Dan had to hold so much or the fact that getting help felt so hopeless. I think what I have recently noticed is that there is some shame around being bullied. Kids don’t always tell initially because they are embarrased it is happening at all.
It also seems when there is no quick solution, parents aren’t sure what to do. It is a no man’s parenting land so to speak because “the playground” is kid turf.
I’ve been thinking about this so much because in our house kindness has been held as such a high value and I am beginning to wonder how this will effect our kids in moments when they discover the world isn’t always kind. Without realizing it, we have created this alter-world in our little family.
In an effort to teach our kids to share, be thoughtful, to be kind, I worry we didn’t teach them enough about self respect and self confidence. Even though you can be all those things, I think kids that are already gentle by nature need a little boost in the self care department. Our son Josiah, in particular, was already wired towards a certain kind of sensitivity and I worry he will be a target.
This is one of those parenting subjects that I really do worry about, it’s tricky and complicated.
Dan, if you don’t mind, is there anything you wished your parents or other adults would have done to help you?
When I was 15 , I seriously doubted that I would make it to 20. I still marvel that I’ve made it this far.
I was the fat girl starting in middle school. And the teasing was daily. In high school, I was sexually assaulted and raped. I never told my parents. I think the reason was three-fold. There was the shame of being overweight in a family of non-overweight people. There was the fact that my parents were divorced and my mother worked nights. She wasn’t available and then there was the reality of school, it was unsafe. The adults there could not be counted on to help. In my 13 years of schooling I count 3 teachers who made a seriously positive impact on my life and I went to a “decent” public school.
I worked hard to overcome these obstacles. I was a very good student,participated in extracurricular activities, even helped organize a sit-in against racism that was aired on Night Line. But the social aspect of it was torturous and devastating. At 38, I’m still recovering.
Now that I’m a parent my primary goal is to have a relationship with my child wherein we share our lives fully and really know each other I try to make sure they feel safe coming to me with the little stuff and the big stuff. The struggles of modern life make that a huge challenge. For all of the “connectivity” we have with our gadgets, it is the face to face intimate moments that form the bonds our children will rely on in times of great crisis. If that bond isn’t there, who will they turn to?
My number one experience with bullying and basic bad behavior in children these days has to go along the lines of mean children are mean for two reasons…their parents often not only allow it….but encourage it/ and teach it. We have had a run in recently where the parent not only just snubbed her nose at her daughters, over the top, rude behavior but she actually defended it as “just fine” behavior. Something along the lines of “I don’t like everyone, I don’t expect her to either.”
My feeling on that is that yes, in life I don’t like everyone. But hell, I have to talk to people and interact with people kindly that I “don’t like” just about everyday of my life. It is called social etiquette and so many find it easier to just use the “boys will be boys” “girls will be girls” modo instead of actually taking the time to teach their children actual social skills. Can’t tell you how many friends have told me they are just “so tired” after a long day of work that they just don’t want to deal with any of it? If we all continue with these attitudes the problem will be getting far worse before it ever gets better.
Oh…did I mention we homeschool? Yep you can’t even get away from mean girls and bullies when you homeschool. I am telling you…without an adult to teach a child these are not “ok” behaviors it doesn’t matter what setting they are in. They will find a way to pick on other children. Only difference is we can keep on walking and limit interactions with them. Especially when you know the bullies parent sees nothing wrong with hurtful, unkind behavior and thinks it is actually a “good thing”…ughhh
Patience, I think so much of what you’re doing well with your kids is not just in letting them know explicitly that they can always come to you with a problem, but also that you LIVE IT the rest of the time.
I was picked on at various times during my adolescence, and I don’t think I ever told my parents. For starters, I didn’t think they would take my feelings seriously, I expected that they’d dismiss what was happening as trivial stuff. Right there, there’s a problem. I’ll never know whether they would *actually* have blown off my feelings, because I never told them…because I didn’t feel like my feelings were valued by them. We need to show our kids every day that we value them as people, that the things that are serious to them are valid, even if sometimes they seem trivial to us.
There was one time when my mother and I were walking through the school cafeteria during some after-school activities, and a group of girls who had been taunting me regularly that semester started catcalling me, with my mom right there!! I muttered something about that, and my mom told me that it wasn’t about me, and not to be so sensitive. (Parents, let’s make a pact among ourselves not to respond that way, ok? Believe your kids.) I told her to LISTEN, that it WAS about me. Surprisingly, she did listen, and then she got mad, and I ran off, embarassed, while she lectured the bullies. The bullying stopped – well, I think they picked a new target. Ugh. Thing is, my mom didn’t believe me until she heard it with her own ears, and the fact that she was a person who was disinclined to take her daughter’s side of things was the reason I hadn’t talked to her about it.
I don’t think we need to be telling kids to tell adults stuff. I think we need to be telling adults to LISTEN and VALIDATE, and not just to the big stuff, or to the stuff that fits our world view, but to all the trivial stuff and the stuff that is outside our comfort zone. We also need to think about the messages we send to our kids about bodies and dating and sex and drugs…have we communicated our hopes and concerns without demonizing people who do things differently? Will our kids avoid talking to us because they’re certain they’ll get in trouble, or sure that we’ll tell them their thoughts don’t matter?
When the adults really start to listen, from the time their children are babies, maybe kids will feel like they can depend on us. And maybe we won’t end up with kids who feel mean enough inside to pick on other people in the first pplace.
Patience, that’s a hard question to answer. I doubt my mother would be happy that I was sharing personal information like this online to begin with – she grew up in a household where you didn’t talk about things unless they were life-threatening, and even then you didn’t talk about them. She and I had a connection when I was very young because she was the only parent I had; my parents divorced when I was 4, and while my father was still very much involved in my life and is one of my role models to this day, he just wasn’t physically around. We were about 200 miles apart, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
(Sidebar: Ever listen to the Zac Brown Band song “Highway 20 Ride?” Yeah, that describes the relationship I had with my father to a t. I can’t listen to it without tearing up a little, which is a bad thing to do while driving.)
The one thing I really wish that I had been taught was that showing emotions was acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable for my mother, and so when I would spend nights crying because of what felt like social torture at the time, the last thing I wanted to do is show anybody that I was hurting. I didn’t want to talk to mom, and I didn’t want to even think about picking up the phone to call dad.
it doesn’t help that the few times I tried to defend myself, I was the one punished by my parents. I remember one kid in particular at our church who thought I was a great target. He would corner me in the hallways after service, and pick on me, call me names. My reward, when my mother came across me trying to escape him, was to sit with her in the church nursery. In the nursery! I was 13 years old – talk about embarrassing. My strategy eventually became just to linger near his parents and away from mine, because at the very least he would get reprimanded and told to keep his hands to himself. It wasn’t always a deterrent for him, but it was enough to keep me feeling somewhat safe.
You’re exactly right that there’s some shame about being bullied – just like there is about other abuse. It’s not the victim’s fault, but in my case, I always wished that I was more of the average – that I fit in enough to disappear and not be the target. I didn’t worry about outrunning the bear, I just wanted to outrun the other person so that he/she got the abuse, not me. I don’t know where the shame comes from, but in my case, it was because it made me feel weak, and asking for help felt like an even weaker move. If I dealt with it on my own, I could at least save some face in the eyes of these mythical people who were viewing me in that light.
Thanks Dan so much for sharing all you have, I’m sure it isn’t easy but so valuable to me as a parent. I really, really appreciate it.
*sigh* and look at you now, you’re Weather Dan, a twitter and weather god…and a good, good man. So glad to know you…
I second that.
Aw, thank you both! It really means a lot.