"When you don't fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else's eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you're still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound.
You are the thing that used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you can't even remember what it was like. "
Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult
In the last couple of days I have been thinking a lot about bullying. The above mentioned book, as well as a movie I watched, both dealt with it and therefore left my mind to run wild.
Now I have tried to recall bullying when I was in school, but am drawing a blank. Sure things were said about people, there was the gossip, the rumors, and the odd fist fight. We have all believed that the scales of balance were invented especially for high school. In order for one to feel happy, look cool, or be popular, another must feel horrible, look stupid and be a loser. But in all the corners of my brain that I have searched, I do not recall any of the evilness you hear of today. I do not remember someone being broken by others, there were no cell phones to text your lies city wide within the hour. I actually heard a group of elementary kids were putting drugs in another child's drink at school! Part of me just refuses to believe that this could possibly go on!
I don't know what else to say about this. I want to know when and how kids got to be this way, and why their parents don't know this is going on. I realize from living in this world, that kindness has become the exception and no longer the norm but that can change.... right?
How do you tell teach these kids that what you do matters? How you treat people MATTERS!
2 comments:
How do you tell teach these kids that what you do matters? How you treat people MATTERS!
By example Lisa! The way your parents taught you. The way I 'hopefully' taught my kids...
When I look back on my childhood, I too find it hard to come up with the examples of bullying that you write of. However, I wonder if that is because I look through an adult's eyes at these things. I also wonder if it would be different if it was me who was being bullied or doing the bullying? I don't think the bullying is any different, but as you so eloquently pointed out, the tools that bullies use have changed.
Children learn by example. Children who have been bullied at home or see it there become bullies. It's not a children 'problem' - it's a 'parenting' problem!
Like the old Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song says: 'Teach your children well'.
a huge difference is becuase we as adults are not allowed to punish children. I don't mean forty whacks with the strap, I mean, when the neighbor's daughter is climbing on my fence, I am not allowed to tell her to get down.
It used to be that kids were scared of every adult, becuase every adult had the power to smack a butt AND tell their parents what was going on!
consequence for actions has gone out the window. "Oh, Junior got drunk and smashed his car, Daddy will buy a new one, AND pay off the courts so Junior doesn't have a record.
Kids go to ballet, ball, swimming lessons ect, their ENTIRE day, every minute is structured and they have no time to themselves to learn how to have fun and ..uhm
this got long, didn't it? Hmm
anyway the short of it is this : we are giving our children WAY TOO MUCH. Children need to have time to be children, and they need rules and regulations. Without that, you no longer have a child, you have a brat.
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