Spitting Chicklets

Jack’s Tough.  He’s hung out his whole life with his much-older brothers and his teenage sister, and he can hold his own in a game of “Oh yea? Take that.”

But. There’s this weird thing happening this year with a couple puny 4^th grade bullies on the elementary school bus. These kids don’t even look tough and they cower in the face of anyone taller than eye-level.

It’s all theater: theater of being 10.  Theater of war.

So here we are. First Grade Jack is finding himself in this subordinate place of enslaved fear to the dreaded “bash your face in” threat.  I don’t get it, honestly.  I think Jack should flip his head back and say, “You don’t scare me.”  I’ve seen him defend himself against guys three times his size.  He can morph into a ten-legged supercharged megatron with the slightest oppression from Big Brother Erik.

But this is a different kind of control.

Last week I listened to a program on the devastation to families around the country caused by bullies.  Suicide.  Kids who come to believe they have no other way to escape the shame and pain but to end their own life. This is shocking to me on several levels.  The “easy” answer for us unaffected is to chant my father-in-law’s line (which he borrowed from Eleanor Roosevelt)

 “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Period.

Easy, right?

But what’s the source of that seemingly ridiculous bully power? The bullies in movies and books always look so pathetic!  Who could take them seriously? Yet Jack seems to crumble when he reports this week’s verbal assault. “I’m going to beat your brains out with my lacrosse stick.”  Then he made a motion out the side of his little head and said the kid told him his brains would be sticking out.  (Now this makes sense: Jack’s imagination would easily turn this idea into graphic horror.)

Both sides of my brain kick in:

A. Don’t be a meddling mom and let boys be boys
B. Are you kidding? This is where we step in to teach!

I choose B.  Parents who believe their kids just need to figure things out are sentencing the next generation to the same cycles that we endured.  Why not give them a better hand-off, eh? Isn’t that the job we signed up to do?

Steve and I both stepped in.  We coached Jack to stand tall.  Steve wrote the policy-driven note to the Principal and I went straight to the source and met the all-powerful bus driver to have a chat. She’s got a black belt in yoga and runs her Big Yellow International #63 with an iron fist. I feel better already.

The truth is, I am terrified of my son either being bullied or being the bully himself some day.  Having raised a wide span of kids, I have empirical data to prove that bullying is a trickle-down syndrome.

But the reverse can be true too.  I watched the trailer for a new movie called BULLY and I see this as an inspirational wake-up call.  Isn’t it exciting to believe that we can teach our kids that we can stand together for the underdog and take away the false-power of an ignorant bully? Jesus was bullied by the biggest dudes in town, and yet he never backed down.  And he never threw a punch.  Now that’s power.

What’s your experience with bullies? Is the situation really getting worse or is the attention helping to turn the tide?