A moment about bullying.
Apr. 5th, 2010 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgIt's been all over the place lately - at least, it's getting more attention than I'm used to, even if it's after the fact. After someone has died. Again.
I think I can count on both hands the number of young children and teens the number of deaths reported - bemoaned - and documented to a fare-thee-well in the media lately, and not have many fingers left over.
This is to the good. It's not just you. It NEVER was just you, and if you're still alive to read this, you found a way through. Somehow.
But the children are still dead, and it was not just one incidence of abuse that sent them to take their own lives. Often, it went on - well-known to the legitimate authorities - for years. Days into months into years, and that's what infuriates me. (Does it not anyone?)
Those of us who found our way - remember.
I'll be blunt - I'm one of those who was a very easy target. Up to the age of 8 or so, I'd lived seven miles away from town, in one of five houses where I knew every person who lived in them. And they adored me, and I adored them. (One family moved out briefly, and I was molested by one of the boys in the family that rented the house during that span, but they came back, the icky family left, and my old friends came back with a new last name. I'd tried to tell on the guy, but I only got as far as 'you don't hate anyone' with Mom and that was the end of that. No why. You just don't. Got it.)
Then Dad died. And we moved. Into a neighborhood that had been built post WWII as tract homes, and there were few spaces inbetween them. All of a sudden, I wasn't getting on a bus to go to school with a handful of kids...I walked to it, surrounded by them. And they knew where I lived.
Third grade, I remember chasing the boys when they poked fun at me by going 'ewwww' and taking steps backward. Okay, then. I can play that game. The girls just snubbed me. I liked bugs and frogs or something too much. (I found one of the boys on Facebook recently - and was amazed at what he remembered about me. 'Didn't take crap from anyone.' Mrrr?)
Fourth grade, I had a cadre of boys who made my life miserable. And some of my older sister's 'friends' (She was far more able to co-opt her way into be popular by being mean to others. It worked. Blame her? For what? Survival?) did much the same.
About that time, the first really nasty depressive issue showed its head (I told you I had things on my chart that would make me a really good candidate - PTSD in today's vernacular being a big one) and I became 'special' - as in 'damaged goods weirdo kid.' Shit, I knew. Didn't help, but I knew what they thought.
It was easier to spend time with the adults in the classrooms and library during recess, to be blunt.
Fifth and sixth grades saw me playing by myself on the playgrounds not being used by the younger grades. I'm not sticking around to entertain you - I can go entertain myself just fine, thanks.
Cried the last day of school one year because I knew I'd be coming back in the fall, three months later. Don't tell me kids have no concept of time.
Seventh grade, I was put into a middle school six miles away from home, with no bus. It an hour to get home, sometimes more. And about this time, there stopped being food to pack for lunches. And no money or programs for school lunches. I don't think I'd eat lunch again until I was in college. That was MY responsibility, of course. If I didn't pack something, I deserved to go without. Nevermind there might have been bread, but no peanut butter or anything else you could make a sandwich with...fruit? What? Everything was frozen in the freezer, if you could figure out how to cook a roast - and then pack it in a paper sack. Somehow.
Share lunch with a friend? What friends? I didn't trust anyone enough to attempt the idea.
I got pushed into puddles if anyone noticed me at all. I spent a lot of time in the library - except our librarian got hepatitis and took an extended leave of absence. Yes, I noticed.
Junior high. No lunch. No friends (I actually tried to have a birthday party turning 13. I had to cancel it due to lack of interest. ONE person - who was sufficiently shocked at the cancellation - wanted to come. Last time I ever tried to have one. No, really.) I took typing so that I could stop handwriting things nobody could read. Then took up residence in the typing rooms in the library and began writing stories.
And I cheated on the bus. Yup. Even further away from home (12 miles was the boundary, I was at 11.75) I was expected to walk it daily. I found out where the bus left off half a mile away from home and audited it. I got home first the day the house burned down because of that.
The place we stayed while the house was rebuilt? Back out in the middle of nowhere and nobody begrudged me the bus the rest of that year.
But did I ever feel safe enough approaching my peers? Nope. I suspect Sis had a hand in some of it (hey, how would you like to be part of a family with such a trial and burden...no food, no nothings in it?) but when you get sent off for in-depth psychiatric evaluations your sophomore year, it's clear YOU are the problem.
Sis was brutal. She wanted NOTHING to do with me, and was outright mean to me. She was in drama...and what the $#@!% was I doing there? I embarrassed her by simply existing!
To this day, I avoid any profession that would overlap hers in any way. I don't need it.
I stayed in the typing room in the library, and wrote. I was editor of the school newspaper and aced everything that was associated with writing (hell, I was put on independent study for English because I got through the class list too fast) but was put in the lowest class in math. Just get her through and get her out of here.
One day a boy asked if he could walk me home. I didn't mind, he was a perfect gentlemen and when I got home, I was teased mercilessly about it. Poor guy. I did my best to not encourage him without hurting his feelings and eventually, he stopped.
I didn't do prom. None of the sock hops, dances or whathaveyou. Never cast in a school play. Yay high school. I hated my teens.
When most of my friends were boys, Mom was sure I was doing them. When it was made clear I wasn't? I was gay. You tell me how you win that argument. Guess what I did. NOTHING.
I don't like attention. I'd like to be accomplished, but damn if I want to be noticed. Noticed is not a good thing. Getting married to Jim? Crap. Just let me be married - I don't need to be this year's Princess At The Altar. People tend to pick at you over who you invited, what you're wearing or who made your cake. I don't need it. (I have a larger post to do on my healthy discomfort with weddings. That's another day.)
But if you try to bully me now? I'll ruin you. Once I got out of the house, earned my own way and bought my own lunches? I've never looked back.
Had to confront a bully my last year of college. I won.
Found out what was REALLY at the bottom of the depressive issues? NEVER AGAIN. (And so it has been.)
For so many years...I believed them. With nothing else to base my decision on, I just took it in that I was weird, quirky, stuck-up, boring...and those are the nice things...and they didn't want me around.
I'm very good at spending long periods of time alone. It was better than what I would have gotten at the hands of my peers, which included my sister. To this day, I don't trust women. At all. Would like to do something about that, but so far? No luck. (Don't take it personally.)
What would I do for the kids who killed themselves? If I'd known?
There's no way. No, really. Try me sometime. I have no trouble making life miserable for the people who allow this stuff to continue. Kid's immediately out of there - and I can STAND on your last nerve - go ahead, call a cop - until I get what I want, and what I want is an END, visible and real, to the issue.
Fearful? Maybe. At some point. It's lazy work to simply say 'don't let them get to you.' (Ultimately? When they're gone, and you're still here? It IS your responsibility to put it in perspective....) But so help me? Physical issues? If ever I found about some place where it happened...I don't think I would be gentle. Meek, or quiet.
That got me through when nobody would stand up for me. Today, I'll be the person I wanted then. Needed then - and didn't have.
If I know about it. *sighs* I really dislike hearing these stories because I never got a chance to do anything about it - and someone else has died.
There's always a way out - and that is through. Dead is forever. And a completely unacceptable solution...let me tell you more about a better one.
Kid's coming up on five, and I can see some of the beginnings of trying to navigate socially in a group trying to make everything 'fit' into where things belong, including people. Pink and purple is for everyone, not just girls - and if someone teases you, get LOUD (get the teacher? No, you get loud and the teacher gets you!), don't hit. And don't call people names, I don't care what they are. It's rude and not nice. So it goes.
There's always a way. Come here and I tell you how I did it. I'm still here, right?
I think I can count on both hands the number of young children and teens the number of deaths reported - bemoaned - and documented to a fare-thee-well in the media lately, and not have many fingers left over.
This is to the good. It's not just you. It NEVER was just you, and if you're still alive to read this, you found a way through. Somehow.
But the children are still dead, and it was not just one incidence of abuse that sent them to take their own lives. Often, it went on - well-known to the legitimate authorities - for years. Days into months into years, and that's what infuriates me. (Does it not anyone?)
Those of us who found our way - remember.
I'll be blunt - I'm one of those who was a very easy target. Up to the age of 8 or so, I'd lived seven miles away from town, in one of five houses where I knew every person who lived in them. And they adored me, and I adored them. (One family moved out briefly, and I was molested by one of the boys in the family that rented the house during that span, but they came back, the icky family left, and my old friends came back with a new last name. I'd tried to tell on the guy, but I only got as far as 'you don't hate anyone' with Mom and that was the end of that. No why. You just don't. Got it.)
Then Dad died. And we moved. Into a neighborhood that had been built post WWII as tract homes, and there were few spaces inbetween them. All of a sudden, I wasn't getting on a bus to go to school with a handful of kids...I walked to it, surrounded by them. And they knew where I lived.
Third grade, I remember chasing the boys when they poked fun at me by going 'ewwww' and taking steps backward. Okay, then. I can play that game. The girls just snubbed me. I liked bugs and frogs or something too much. (I found one of the boys on Facebook recently - and was amazed at what he remembered about me. 'Didn't take crap from anyone.' Mrrr?)
Fourth grade, I had a cadre of boys who made my life miserable. And some of my older sister's 'friends' (She was far more able to co-opt her way into be popular by being mean to others. It worked. Blame her? For what? Survival?) did much the same.
About that time, the first really nasty depressive issue showed its head (I told you I had things on my chart that would make me a really good candidate - PTSD in today's vernacular being a big one) and I became 'special' - as in 'damaged goods weirdo kid.' Shit, I knew. Didn't help, but I knew what they thought.
It was easier to spend time with the adults in the classrooms and library during recess, to be blunt.
Fifth and sixth grades saw me playing by myself on the playgrounds not being used by the younger grades. I'm not sticking around to entertain you - I can go entertain myself just fine, thanks.
Cried the last day of school one year because I knew I'd be coming back in the fall, three months later. Don't tell me kids have no concept of time.
Seventh grade, I was put into a middle school six miles away from home, with no bus. It an hour to get home, sometimes more. And about this time, there stopped being food to pack for lunches. And no money or programs for school lunches. I don't think I'd eat lunch again until I was in college. That was MY responsibility, of course. If I didn't pack something, I deserved to go without. Nevermind there might have been bread, but no peanut butter or anything else you could make a sandwich with...fruit? What? Everything was frozen in the freezer, if you could figure out how to cook a roast - and then pack it in a paper sack. Somehow.
Share lunch with a friend? What friends? I didn't trust anyone enough to attempt the idea.
I got pushed into puddles if anyone noticed me at all. I spent a lot of time in the library - except our librarian got hepatitis and took an extended leave of absence. Yes, I noticed.
Junior high. No lunch. No friends (I actually tried to have a birthday party turning 13. I had to cancel it due to lack of interest. ONE person - who was sufficiently shocked at the cancellation - wanted to come. Last time I ever tried to have one. No, really.) I took typing so that I could stop handwriting things nobody could read. Then took up residence in the typing rooms in the library and began writing stories.
And I cheated on the bus. Yup. Even further away from home (12 miles was the boundary, I was at 11.75) I was expected to walk it daily. I found out where the bus left off half a mile away from home and audited it. I got home first the day the house burned down because of that.
The place we stayed while the house was rebuilt? Back out in the middle of nowhere and nobody begrudged me the bus the rest of that year.
But did I ever feel safe enough approaching my peers? Nope. I suspect Sis had a hand in some of it (hey, how would you like to be part of a family with such a trial and burden...no food, no nothings in it?) but when you get sent off for in-depth psychiatric evaluations your sophomore year, it's clear YOU are the problem.
Sis was brutal. She wanted NOTHING to do with me, and was outright mean to me. She was in drama...and what the $#@!% was I doing there? I embarrassed her by simply existing!
To this day, I avoid any profession that would overlap hers in any way. I don't need it.
I stayed in the typing room in the library, and wrote. I was editor of the school newspaper and aced everything that was associated with writing (hell, I was put on independent study for English because I got through the class list too fast) but was put in the lowest class in math. Just get her through and get her out of here.
One day a boy asked if he could walk me home. I didn't mind, he was a perfect gentlemen and when I got home, I was teased mercilessly about it. Poor guy. I did my best to not encourage him without hurting his feelings and eventually, he stopped.
I didn't do prom. None of the sock hops, dances or whathaveyou. Never cast in a school play. Yay high school. I hated my teens.
When most of my friends were boys, Mom was sure I was doing them. When it was made clear I wasn't? I was gay. You tell me how you win that argument. Guess what I did. NOTHING.
I don't like attention. I'd like to be accomplished, but damn if I want to be noticed. Noticed is not a good thing. Getting married to Jim? Crap. Just let me be married - I don't need to be this year's Princess At The Altar. People tend to pick at you over who you invited, what you're wearing or who made your cake. I don't need it. (I have a larger post to do on my healthy discomfort with weddings. That's another day.)
But if you try to bully me now? I'll ruin you. Once I got out of the house, earned my own way and bought my own lunches? I've never looked back.
Had to confront a bully my last year of college. I won.
Found out what was REALLY at the bottom of the depressive issues? NEVER AGAIN. (And so it has been.)
For so many years...I believed them. With nothing else to base my decision on, I just took it in that I was weird, quirky, stuck-up, boring...and those are the nice things...and they didn't want me around.
I'm very good at spending long periods of time alone. It was better than what I would have gotten at the hands of my peers, which included my sister. To this day, I don't trust women. At all. Would like to do something about that, but so far? No luck. (Don't take it personally.)
What would I do for the kids who killed themselves? If I'd known?
There's no way. No, really. Try me sometime. I have no trouble making life miserable for the people who allow this stuff to continue. Kid's immediately out of there - and I can STAND on your last nerve - go ahead, call a cop - until I get what I want, and what I want is an END, visible and real, to the issue.
Fearful? Maybe. At some point. It's lazy work to simply say 'don't let them get to you.' (Ultimately? When they're gone, and you're still here? It IS your responsibility to put it in perspective....) But so help me? Physical issues? If ever I found about some place where it happened...I don't think I would be gentle. Meek, or quiet.
That got me through when nobody would stand up for me. Today, I'll be the person I wanted then. Needed then - and didn't have.
If I know about it. *sighs* I really dislike hearing these stories because I never got a chance to do anything about it - and someone else has died.
There's always a way out - and that is through. Dead is forever. And a completely unacceptable solution...let me tell you more about a better one.
Kid's coming up on five, and I can see some of the beginnings of trying to navigate socially in a group trying to make everything 'fit' into where things belong, including people. Pink and purple is for everyone, not just girls - and if someone teases you, get LOUD (get the teacher? No, you get loud and the teacher gets you!), don't hit. And don't call people names, I don't care what they are. It's rude and not nice. So it goes.
There's always a way. Come here and I tell you how I did it. I'm still here, right?
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 06:09 pm (UTC)What tends to surprise me the most these days is that people actually SEE me. I've had people wish me a nice day more than once this week - total strangers - who only made eye contact and smiled back. (I've got a running game with my friend Rey of 'let's make someone's day' - I always smile at total strangers if I make eye contact. That's one of the best way to make easy points, so to speak.)
I'm also a firm believer that people continue to do what they get rewarded for, good or bad. If you don't reward bad behavior, it tends to end rather quickly.
I think it's part of the experimentation portion of developing brains - and kids innate desire to put people into 'where they belong' which also equates to 'where I belong in relation to' - what we need to teach is that you can do that without being a jerk.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 07:08 pm (UTC)When I was student teaching in a kindergarten class, we had 2 student teachers, 1 homeroom teacher, and 23 children (far too many for one adult to handle if you ask me). Johnny (not his real name) was different, very clearly so. Since his mom never did take his teacher's pleas to have him seen by a pediatric specialist seriously, I never did know what exactly was wrong. Best case scenario he might suffer from Asperger's. Worst case scenario it was that and ADHD. Johnny needed an aide to work with him one on one, but without a diagnosis, the school district would not provide one.
The teacher tried to be patient with Johnny, but sometimes he became impossible to handle, and went from being quiet and almost preternaturally calm to having full out tantrums. The other kids could tell there was something very wrong there. They started taunting him and excluding him, and he was not socially cognitive enough to understand it was happening. They always blamed him for problems, even when it was clear he had nothing to do with them. Pointing out that would get a retort like "but Johnny always ruins everything anyway". His passiveness encouraged that kind of behavior. It was heartbreaking.
One day, the other student teacher asked our coordinator (i.e., the university professor who was overseeing our training) "What can I do? Asking them to stop doesn't work". The coordinator's answer was "Maybe you need to openly model the kind of behavior you want the kids to have toward Johnny."
Armed with this idea, the other student teacher did something unexpected one day. Johnny was running around having a tantrum.instead of following him around trying to contain him, she went up to him and gave him a hug! Given the kind of kid Johnny was, it was a big gamble. It paid off: it caught him by surprise so much that he didn't have time to react to it. The other kids were puzzled, and one of them asked openly: "Ms. Randall, why did you do that?".
"Well, I wanted to tell Johnny how much I like him. Every day with Johnny is like an adventure, and I like that. Don't you feel the same way?".
"Yeah, you're right. Can I give him a hug too?".
"Well, I'm not sure that Johnny wants to be hugged all day, but you can show him you like him in other ways. You could ask him to sit by you at lunch, and you could ask him to play with you at recess."
The kids were kinder and gentler with Johnny the rest of the day. The classroom teacher was so impressed with it that she started doing the same thing herself, whereas before she'd just roll her eyes and tell the kids to just keep working on their activities and to ignore Johnny (they had gotten too good at it, if you ask me). Soon the kids stopped seeing Johnny as a constant disruption, and started seeing him as an interesting phenomenon. Later in the year, I decided to visit that classroom again (I missed the kids), and the other kids told me at least once "Oh Johnny doesn't always do what you want him to do, but it's okay, we like him anyway." I was very proud of them.
The classroom teacher was a veteran teacher, but sometimes even the best teacher can be too busy with all the other demands teachers must meet to remember that kindness and acceptance in kids shouldn't just be taught with words, but also with gestures. But it pays to remember that if you want others to accept someone, you can't go wrong in showing them instead of telling them.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 08:43 pm (UTC)That said - good instincts. That also said? Looks like the teaching moment wasn't wasted for anyone there.