Bullying in all it's forms

We’ve all suffered from bullying to some degree at some point in our lives. Even those who are bullies have fallen prey to a bully, else where would they have learned the tricks of their trade. When I was a kid it was very much a matter of either, ignore it or get the bully before they got you. Schools weren't proactive about helping the bullied, the other kids mostly just ducked & tried to escape the bully's notice, sometimes you might have got help in the form of an older sibling but that was fraught with danger since often that only firmed the bully's resolve to get you later. In general I got teased; I can't recall physical bullying at school, apart from being tripped. I also had things taken from me and got blamed for stuff I didn't do. Got all that at home too, part & parcel of a large family perhaps. I had residual issues from the teasing I copped over the years
but I've pretty much dealt with it and almost all the time can remember it was just people being nasty in order to help themselves not seem so bad. Tease me and see if I care nowadays.

Just don't tease my kids... then my inner Lioness comes out roaring and I have to stop myself from becoming a bully.

I'm sure every mother is the same when it comes to their children. I'm in my eighth year of being a school parent and tenth of 'education' once you include kinder. During that time we haven't escaped the notice of bullies sadly. The first incidences I can recall were at kindergarten, my daughter wasn't the target, every child not part of a particular coterie was. A group of three girls and a boy silently declared themselves the King & Queens of Kinder. If they wanted to play in an area, sit at a table, use some equipment etc then no-one else was permitted to use it. Through intimidation they achieved their aim. My daughter tried to play with them on a number of occasions. I spent a fair bit of time at the Kinder, I was President of the committee as well as a willing helper so I often saw these kids in action. They'd be on the monkey bars and another child would want t a turn, they would simply ignore that child or tell them it was so & so's turn if the child pushed the issue. With four of them, they could do that. It was all I could do not to tell them what little horrors they were but not my place and as I said, it wasn't targeted at my daughter. I frequently fielded questions from my daughter as to why these kids did this and it was hard to answer honestly and yet without an element of judgment. One day my daughter was at creche and one of the girls was also there. J asked her to play and joyfully told me of it when I picked her up. She was so excited that C had played with her when she asked her to and told me that when she had offered her friendship, C had accepted only on the proviso that J promised not to ever tell her friends. Bullying starts young.
The rest of the kinder years were fairly smooth sailing. Then came school. J started off really well but very quickly attracted the 'attention' of a boy who just seemed to need to constantly push at her. He followed her, copied her, pushed over, damaged her work, you name it We spoke to the teacher and they put some strategies in place to keep a distance between this boy & my daughter. It wasn't fun hearing what was happening but you only needed one minute with this boy to know the issue wasn't bullying so much as envy and attraction. The behaviour continued throughout all seven years of my daughter's time at that school. The worst incidents that stayed with me were 1) when he physically pushed her face first, into a brick wall. 2) When he pushed her leg into a gap in a bench and then pushed her off the bench 3) when he had another boy hold her arms so he could force her to look at something.

These weren't the worst incident as that school though. Nor the only bully she encountered.

I spoke to the school time and again regarding this boy. In the first couple of years they were always very proactive and the boy would be spoken to/dealt with, his behaviour would improve & all would be good for a while. As background, this boy repeated prep, has ADHD and his medication was not always well administered. His home life was sad and it gave me an opportunity to speak with my daughter about many things including the concept that people repeat/copy what they see usually so she should try to remember that his life must be pretty sad to make him deal with her as he did. She learned some valuable lessons because of his behaviour and while there were occasions that he overstepped the bounds, mostly it was just nuisance value. The Principal of the school changed after a couple of years and that's when bullying really became an issue at that school. When my daughter was in grade 3 her teacher was a bully himself. The school claims to have no tolerance for bullying, their motto includes respect, as well as pride & safety. Fine words but a distinct lack of practice. My daughter reacts to teasing, try as I might, I haven't been able to teach her to ignore it, it's something that comes with maturity. A few kids, including this particular boy who had been of issue for the last three years, would tease my daughter. The standard way to deal with this was for the child being annoyed to ask the annoyers to stop, it can work, but only where there is backup and repercussions. They would start, my daughter would ask them to stop, they would continue, she'd ask again (probably a little louder), they'd continue. Eventually she would go and speak to the teacher in an effort to get support. What she would get was a hand held up, palm out, with accompanying words to the effect of "not interested, solve it or not but leave me alone". He was known for "the hand" along with his ineffectiveness. So my daughter would get no support and she would return to her seat and more teasing. Sometimes this would also involve damage to her work. Eventually, she would explode at the kids tormenting her. At this point the teacher would get involved... He'd send my daughter to time out and go back to his desk. At no point did he ever step in to stop the teasing, he never reprimanded the kids who were causing the situation but he yelled at my daughter for reacting, for disrupting  the class, for work not being completed after another child had torn up her work. Persistent visits to the school by myself produced no results worth speaking of. My daughter’s version was questioned but fully supported by other children in the class. One other boy in particular was having problems with this teacher. He wasn't being bullied by other children, just the teacher. He was told, and his mother was as well, that he was simply a lazy, dumb child who would amount to little. Both this boy and my daughter were bright children, keen to learn. My friend’s son went backwards at an incredible rate. He lost all his self-esteem, all willingness, eagerness to go to school, to learn. My daughter was more resilient but still suffered. Coupled with what my daughter had been telling me about him, the teasing & lack of response, supported by others I realized he was a useless piece of nothing in terms of my child's education and safety. As the school does combined classes there was a great potential for a student to have the same teacher two years in a row. I went to speak to the principal so as to avoid that possibility and to address, once again, the boy who consistently caused problems for my daughter. To that point I had never been so angry with the school and the lack of action on these types of issue. I wrote a letter of complaint and delivered it to the Principal. He read it and did not address my complaints regarding the teacher nor the teasing. He focused on my daughter. It was her responsibility to control her reactions. Granted, she has that responsibility but this was an 8 year old child who was still learning a skill that many adults have not. I did not think it unreasonable to expect a teacher to interact with his class and support a child's effort to stop bullying. It appeared that it was. After a number of minutes going around the same argument I told the Principal that if my daughter was in a class with the main bully or with that teacher I would remove her from the school and lodge a complaint with the Education department detailing the lack of support and action of serious issues.

I wondered if I shouldn't move her to a new school anyway but was mindful of the fact that she had done nothing wrong, she was comfortable at the school, she had friends there. Why should she be punished for others failings. I could recall how I felt when my parents moved me from one school to another. The bullying was preferable because at least I had some friends to provide a buffer. At the new schools I got bullied still but had no friends initially. I didn't want her to suffer the same, at least not when the bullying was fairly low grade. Mostly I wanted the school to be proactive about bullying and take steps to prevent it rather than sometimes deal with it and sometimes not. I wanted them to accept that a child who reacts to bullying isn't the one who should be dealt with. We managed to get through that awful year and the teacher involved ended up leaving the school. The following year my daughter had the same teacher as she had been with in grade 1. We were happy with this as he is a great teacher and was now in his fourth year of teaching. Overall, J had a great year marred only by one of the worst incidences she suffered. Towards the end of the year a boy in the class, a grade 3 child of approx. 9 yrs age spoke to my daughter as they were all getting their bags organized at the end of the day. He was one of the troublemakers in the class and J had had a couple of minor skirmishes with him but nothing of concern.   I got a phone call from the teacher in charge of that unit to let me know that J was on her way home, that she would need to talk with me and debrief on what was said, she also told me what she had done about the incident so far. Immediately the boy had spoken to J, she had told her teacher who had spoken to the unit leader. The boy was removed from the classroom and sent to the office to await the Principal. This was when I got the phone call. What was said you wonder... a 9 yr old boy told my daughter that he was going to have sex with her and perform oral sex after she did the same. He didn't use those words. Some of those he used were 'fanny & turkey" and a few other unsavoury, not generally child friendly terms. I was horrified, J was terribly upset. She didn't understand exactly what he had said but she understood enough to know how it made her feel and that wasn't a good feeling. So we had a long, frank discussion about abuse in various forms and again, that children model what they have seen and heard. I use things like this to help her understand that not everyone sees things as she might nor does everyone have the privileged background she does.

We got through the initial incident and I was accepting of the school dealing with the boy. I told them I didn't believe my daughter should have to be faced with such behaviour and abuse so I expected them to move the boy or ensure that buffers were in place for her safety at ALL times, not just in the classroom. The class teacher and the unit teacher were in complete agreement with me. The Principal, he plays a different game called politics. I spoke to him the next day and was told he was waiting for the boy’s parents to get in touch with him so he could discuss the disciplinary options. I reiterated my preference for the boy to be moved and was told that he had to consider all the children not just my daughter and it would be unfair to move the boy at this late stage of the year. All discussion was moot; he wasn't prepared to consider it. The conversation ended with his agreement to contact me the next day with more details on what was being put in place to avoid a repeat incident and what discipline the boy would face. Meanwhile my daughter was questioned several times over the incident. I was not concerned beyond the fact that I felt she should have had the option to be questioned with me present in case she felt upset over it. At no time did I doubt what she reported was what had happened. She had no knowledge of the terms this boy used prior to him speaking to her and another boy in the class overheard him. She told me of being questioned over it and added that she felt like she was not believed. I rang two days later to be told that the boy’s parents hadn't been in touch. Another couple of days and the boy’s parents weren't accepting that their son had said such things and were refusing to co-operate with the school so there was nothing the Principal could do. This was where it ended in a stalemate. I refused to remove my daughter from her school; she did not deserve to be punished for this boys action nor for the Principals lack of principles. The various teachers who were aware of it kept an eye on her as best they were able and ensured that there was no opportunity for a repeat. She finished the year with no further problems but still a lingering confusion and fearfulness regarding this boy. Her second last year at the school was an easy year. The last one looked to be the same. My daughter is a good student, she achieves above average grades in all subjects, she loves sport and she plays any number of sports. She gets involved in everything she can and I encourage that. She doesn't tend to work really well with alot of children in her peer group though. She's a likable girl but appeals more to adults than to children. A flaw in the way I have raised her perhaps. She was very happy with the teacher she was with; her classmates included several girls she was becoming friendly with. Not long after the year began the girl who lives next door developed a crush on the boy from across the road. Someone made a comment about J having a crush on someone else, messages got mixed around and the girl next door decided she needed to talk to J. J was avoiding her because of a personality clash. One Friday afternoon as J walked home the boy from across the road and another boy accosted J and restrained her so the girl from next door could talk to her. Despite requests from J to leave her alone and allow her to continue on her way they maintained their grip. She eventually broke away from them by using skills she had learned in Tae Kwan Doh to remove herself from their grasp. She came straight home and told me about it. I reacted badly perhaps, after ascertaining what happened and where these boys were I stormed straight over to them at the house across the street. When I told them what J had said they denied it, as kids do. I told them very directly that I wasn't going to argue who was lying although J had no reason to, little history of it and my trust but they had better listen well. They assaulted my daughter the moment they laid a hand on her, they continued to do so when they ignored her requests to be let go and that it was a criminal offense that I would have no hesitation in reporting to the police if they ever dared do such a thing again to ANYONE. I then went home and rang the school. I told her teacher of the incident and my reaction to it. He was disturbed by the boys behaviour and understanding of my reaction. He took the matter to the Vice Principal and not to the Principal. By this time the whole school community knew not to bother with the ineffective political creature that was the Principal. I got a phone call on the Monday morning straight after assembly to advise me that the boys involved had been called to the VP's office and told in no uncertain terms that if they ever did anything similar the school would be reporting them to the Police and they should be considering themselves beyond fortunate it hadn't been done already in regards to what they did on the Friday. They were also subjected to disciplinary action in the form of suspensions and reflections. This is how it should be done...

That wasn't the end of bullying in it's various forms that my daughter has experienced. She has been the victim of whispered campaigns, of deliberate exclusion from a group and all those nasty things kids can do. Every time we have talked about what would make people act in such a manner, what J should do to overcome it, how she should react. Where girls were being nasty about her I counseled her to be nice to them. Where she was excluded I suggested she take a book and find a quiet corner to read it. I reinforced at every turn that what was happening was not about her, but about their own shortcomings and fears. Time will tell if I have managed to repair the damage done by bullying or to avoid damage to her psyche. I will not allow her to run from bullying nor to bully in return. Where her behaviour has crossed the line, and it has at times, I have disciplined her in turn. Often my discipline includes her having to admit what she has done and apologize. I believe that only by accepting and acknowledging what we have done can we hope to avoid doing the same again. We all tend to lash out when we are hurt, attempting to pass on some pain, reduce our own anguish but it never works. I have tried to teach her that sometimes the best thing you can do with a bully is to befriend them and if that fails, avoid them. At other times it's best to face them and show them they have no power over you. Such hard things for a child to learn but I hope they will stand her in good stead in her future.

This year we have begun a new phase in education. My daughter has started senior school and my son has started prep. I now have new issues to deal with as boys deal with life so differently to girls and what has worked with my daughter will not work with my son. I can only hope that he never treats anyone with the disrespect and callousness that some boys have dealt with my daughter. If he does he will have me to deal with and it won't be pretty...