Bullies will always be there. They come in both sexes. (Girls are much crueler than boys, I’ve found.) Teach your kids to be mentally tough against these insecure pricks.
A sense of humor and a nonchalant attitude will get you through more situations than losing your temper to some piece of muscle bound trash trying to goad you into a fight.
Most importantly, I will tell my children that school is a trial by fire place. Not everyone is going to like you and if you think that they do, then you are sorely mistaken. If you do something just to be liked, to conform, you will do it the rest of your life and never have a back bone. If
you don’t stand up for yourself verbally, no one else will.
If all else fails, there is a line from Tommy Boy that I think a parent could use when they know their darling is being bullied.
“I know who you are and I know where you live . I know where you sleep and what I’m going to do to you will make your mother’s cry, you little twerps.”
Above all, silliness aside, I will teach my children my number one rule in life: Never make a threat you cannot carry out. If some bully says he’s going to beat the snot out of you after school, and you feel the need to threaten back, say, “Excellent,I look forward to it. I shall make sure that the Principal and our parents are there to witness my defeat so I don’t have to waste any extra breath explaining why my lungs have collapsed after you stomp on them.”
Then have my child go to the principals office or to call me and I’ll take care of the rest.
When I was in fourth grade or so, and a total geek and outcast, a couple of popular girls pretended to want to know what I’d learned in dance class. I was suspicious, but so desperate for positive attention that I went along. Well, it was a setup, of course, and after I’d been dancing away they started to laugh and tell me what a geek I was ever to have believed that they could ever have been interested in anything about me. Little girls are the meanest critters on earth.
Well, I knew what was coming, and indeed the next day they came up to me and started doing geeky dance steps and shrieking with laughter. I said “No, that’s not how it goes” and started demonstrating steps (one of the bravest things I think I’ve ever done, in retrospect). It stopped 'em cold; one of my very, very few triumphs in those years.
Gr8Kat–your post reminded me of why you are one of my favorite posters! I loved the pics of your friend and your web site is always fun!
Laura–you are a real cutie!
My bullie story–my daughter was being harassed on the bus by this little twerp. I stopped the bus one afternoon and in front of the driver and all the kids announced that I had heard this kid was doing something (I can’t honestly remember–something sexual like grabbing a kid’s crotch and saying sexual things to the girls. I announced that that kind of behavior was not going to be tolerated and I was going straight to his mother and tell her if it didn’t stop. Believe me, it stopped. Parents have to get involved. Too many kids get away with bullying–heck, I’ve seen incidences where teachers subtly encouraged it.
When my daughter came home upset because people called her names I would ask her, is it true? She’d say no, of course and I’d ask her why she was paying attention to liars. Then we’d role-play giving back the creeps as good as they gave.
Also, I can’t emphasize this enough–make sure your child does fit in with looks, clothes, etc. Bullies look for anything different–if your kid looks like something out of the rag barrell, they’ll persecute him. Sad, but true. Get them braces when young, get contacts (that was a big one for my daughter), make sure their clothes are like the other kids, etc.
Sometimes home schooling just postpones the problem. Most kids do fine with it–but some kids never ever learn how to interact with their peers. My daughter’s first cousin is a prime example–the poor kid nursed till he was 6 or 7, his mother smothered him and he simply never learned the social skills of getting along with other kids. Now he is a high school student and he constantly says inappropriate things to my daughter. She avoids him and I try to make sure she is never around him.
My daughter has told me that she appreciated the lessons of compassion she learned from being targeted by snotty little brats at time. She’s a pretty nice kid.
I was at my father’s office a few months ago and noticed a note on his desk from his secretary detailing a cold call from a broker whose name I recognized; indeed the note mentioned “played soccer with your son in grade school”.
I just added to the bottom of the note: “Beat me up after practice.”
Smilingjaws said:
Also, I can’t emphasize this enough–make sure your child does fit in with looks, clothes, etc. Bullies look for anything different–if your kid looks like something out of the rag barrell, they’ll persecute him. Sad, but true. Get them braces when young, get contacts (that was a big one for my daughter), make sure their clothes are like the other kids, etc."
I strongly disagree with you here, Smilingjaws. It seems like an enormous contradiction to say on one hand “It dosen’t matter what a bunch of idiots think of you” and then turn around and spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on designer clothes and cool toys or whatever so that that same bunch of idiots will like the child. Actions speak a lot louder than words, and investing so much in the popularity game is justifing it and saying that you agree with it–that giving in to the bullies and fitting in are more important than piano lessons or family vacations or giving to charity or putting away toward the college fund or any of the other things that that money could go to.
I am not an ogre, and I am not suggesting one should go out of one’s way to dress a child like a nerd because it builds charecter, but it seems to me that when a child comes home crying that the kids don’t like them because they don’t have the right tennis shoes, the last thing one should do is go by those shoes. It sets up a weird priority list that the child will not grow out of–I’m in college, and all the time I see people who complain about how poor they are, but still invest big bucks in Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts.
This sort of thing is why it is good for kids to have an allowance. When you save up for weeks and weeks to buy a trendy item, only to find out that it really isn’t all that great once you have it, you learn very clearly how much being trendy costs, and what it means giving up.
