Hello again! Here goes on my annual post. Perhaps I could increase my frequency by posting more than two blogs a year, for once. It is hard to think of meaningful topics that are relatable for most people.
I am currently encountering a topic that is close to my heart: bullying. Bullying has been around since the dawn of time. From the first apes that grew a conscience and created functional tools (and probably bullied the dumber apes) to slavery and Jesus times, we can see notable cases of bulling throughout history.
However, were they ever recorded as bullying incidents? That's what I want to explore here. At what point do we give up on trying to get bullying recognized? Schools have promoted a zero tolerance bullying policy for years. Does that mean that it all of a sudden doesn't exist? When I looked up my son's school's bulling policy on their website, it didn't exist. If there is no process to deal with bullies, because bulling doesn't exist, then if anyone was to report bullying, it would make sense that nothing would get done about it, right? Because, it doesn't exist...
Well, I am sure that any living parent can chime in now to let me know that bullying is indeed alive and well. In that case, my question is as follows: What do we do about it? Here's what I did. You can count my mistakes like a kill count from the Hellraiser movies.
First, I asked the bus driver to report the bullying that had then only been happening for 3 days, that we knew of. Okay, perhaps I should back up here...it will be easier to describe the events if I use fake names for the boys involved: R, DE, and D. Now, DE had been blocking R from getting off the bus every day. We don't know why. We just know that we wanted it to stop. Luckily, R was not too shaken by the bullying experience because he knew this younger kid and had seen him every school day for the past 5ish years. Not a threat, just an annoyance.
We waited for the next week to start. The bullying continued. Was it reported? What was the conclusion? The bus driver suggested that R stand up and get into the aisle before the bus stops so that the kids can't prevent him from getting off the bus. It seems that the senior kids had come together to join DE in his quest to make R the last kid off the bus. What the bus driver had suggested was not a safe solution.
When the bus driver claimed that she reported the incident, I asked if she knew the boys names. She did not! I provided one name but was not aware of the other. It turned out that the instigating bully, D, shared the same bus seat as R! The next day, I had to ask the bus driver for a seat reassignment. She said that would take a few days.
Fast forward to Day 5 of being bullied. The bus driver had a talk with DE and D. D claimed that it was R who started the bad behavior on the bus by tripping kids. D took no shame in letting R know on the bus that afternoon that the bus driver would be speaking to him about his bad behavior in tripping kids on the bus.
Here was my first mistake: I walked over to DE's house to talk to his mom. This whole situation was ridiculous, right? If her boy could just stop taunting my boy, all of this could be long forgotten and water under the bridge. Or, so I thought.
Boy, was I wrong. She took no responsibility for her son's behavior and put all the blame on R, who was apparently pushing kids on the bus weeks prior. And it wasn't just DE claiming this. It was lots of kids, all having the same testimony, so it had to be true, right? Suddenly, all the confidence and optimism I had walking over to DE's house in my business casual outfit and high heels diminished to me returning home with my tail between my legs.
I decided then, that resolving bullying through the parents is a futile attempt at seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. My only saving grace: I did muster up the words to confess that I had reported the bulling incident to the school. Guess what? She works at the school! So, ha! However, I ended the conversation by telling her that I would have a conversation with R.
When I got home and told R what DE's mom had said, he was in tears. He said, "Why are they saying these horrible things about me?" He said that maybe he did trip someone, once, and by accident. Suddenly, I was taken back to my own school days of being bullied by the popular girls for weeks on end. The teacher pretended that it wasn't happening and I had no one in my corner. The trauma of being treated less than. The anxiety of having to go to school when you know you'll be be taunted all day. And the PTSD that I didn't realize I had, until now...
What more can I say? As I continued to push with the school to record this incident and inquired with the bus driver about how to resolve this already, I realized that I was out of my depth on understanding who is actually going to fix this problem of ours. When I say ours, I mean R's and mine. Similar to how the bullying went for me some 30 odd years ago, you start to see very quickly that no one else cares. Nothing has changed since I was a kid. A bullying situation is for you and your family to muddle through. Everyone just looks the other way. No matter how much you want to get on that bus and tell that bully to stop it, you can't. Your hands are tied.
Of course, after the bus driver spoke with both boys, D, started verbally taunting R at school. The more you push, the worse it can become. Is there a handbook on bullying? Luckily, DE seemed to stop and that meant that the gang of students he had recruited on the bus also lost interest in banding together to stop R from getting off the bus. I have gone through so many emotions over these past weeks of trying to advocate for my son. I wanted to stand and fight for injustice. I wanted retribution. I wanted an apology.
It was not about making it stop as much as it was about making sure that it never happens again. R was really not that bothered by it, as he claimed. However, I couldn't ignore the fact that someone wanted to be mean to my baby. He doesn't have siblings to stand up for him. He's all on his own, except for his friends in the classroom. That is the only thing that gave him confidence through this whole experience. He has friends at school and he didn't "need" these kids on the bus - to like him, be nice to him, or even to care about him. To me, that's not right. If bus parents and kids can't watch out for each other on the streets, what is the point of living in a neighborhood?
We might as well move out to a farm, swear off all neighbors, and hope that our only danger is being hit by a speeding truck on the highway (Pet Semetary reference).
Incident still ongoing, I figured I would write about it while the feelings were fresh. If you have a bullying story, share it. Reduce the stigma by calling out all bullies. This is the only way that we can stand up to them. By naming them. Speaking of which, I hope that I haven't given away any names here, with my details. The bus stop will never be the same for me again. It will always be a source of anxiety. Parents looking at me, knowing that I snitched on their son. What else could I have done? If I don't stand up for my child, who will?
This was not a much ado about nothing experience, if you ask my opinion. If you ask my son, he will tell you that it was nothing. He is stronger than me. I know that now. Unfortunately, bullying still exists and it always will, until we can find a way to take away their power. Speak up for those being bullied. Please. There are more good guys in this world than bad ones. I still wanna believe that there is good in this world, but maybe it is time for me to take off my rose-colored glasses.
