What I’ve learnt

as a mother the first thing that I have noticed is that bullying—especially when it comes to young people (like pre-school, kindy) is that it’s all how the adults around the children see it.

And how sad is that....

To me bullying, especially mental bullying is that if what you are saying makes that person feel (or actually) cry then you are being mean, and if you can see the distress on the child’s face and you keep on taunting the person about the cry, then you are bullying—this to me is what you go one when you are a kid, because the older you get the easier you hold your face. Still, taunting the same person is mental bullying.

Am I wrong?

Still, a lot of people with laugh it off (especially when they are the child’s parent) and say ‘oh, it’s just being mean.’ and yes, he is just being mean, but being mean the way that makes people want to cry no matter who sensitive that person is (saying this my son is sensitive, still...) if that person starts to cry, or get distressed, that’s bullying, not being mean!

I hate to see my son cry—though I’m not brave enough (not true, but you don’t do that shit, and the places it’s in, you have to be careful) anyway, the only things you can do is teach your children what they can do to stop, or harden themselves. It’s all there is to it.

To my son, I told him not to let them do that to him—I told him that unfortunately he’s always going to be bigger than everyone else around him and they will always want to blame him even if he’s in tears and begging for them to stop. Because let’s face it, that little kid couldn’t possibly be responsible, he’s just a kid.

Yeah, it’s real sad that I’m actually telling the truth.

Anyway, I told him it was like when someone hits you, you tell them ‘stop it, I don’t like it’. I told him to do it that, except the words will be ‘stop that, you’re being mean.”

It might not be all that great advice, but like I said my son is sensitive, and as big as a kid a year older than him, and isn’t the sesame street thing to say what you mean, and mean what you say... maybe that last part isn’t true, but you get the gist.

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A teacher in NY was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stamp on it and really mess it up but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty is was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry...Now even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bully’s another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.

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