If you have a child in school, you’re worried about bullying, or should be. Bullying seems to have gone on since two or three kids first met up, but it’s gotten a lot worse. Time was, when a teacher went out with the kids at recess and interrupted that behavior, but now a lot of schools don’t even have recess. Teachers are limited in the kind of consequences they can impose, and sometimes it’s the teacher who is getting bullied. Some very bad things go on in locker rooms and on social media. Lives are being ended, or ruined, every day, because of bullying. We all know this; we just can’t agree on what to do about it.
Maybe start at home. Do your kids hear you denigrating certain groups of people, candidates with whom you disagree, or laughing at ethnic jokes? Have you signed on to the snarky nicknaming that seems to go with political speech? When a television personality makes disparaging remarks, do you turn it off and explain to the young people that we don’t listen to that kind of talk, even if it’s a potential leader who’s doing it?
Bullying is everywhere, and too often we just accept it as part of the world we live in. We say someone has the bully pulpit. We allow athletes to engage in trash talk on the court or field. What if a coach pulled a player off the team or out of the game for that? What if the coach didn’t ever yell at the players? What if fans were asked to leave the gym for disrespectful behavior?
Parents can’t be everywhere, can’t always control the music that kids listen to, or who the teens hang out with. But we could do a lot more homeschooling in manners, and hope it creates a foundation for them to choose helpful actions.
In my youth, our closest neighbors had children with disabilities. Ou parents were friends, and I spent a lot of time with those kids. I was warned to treat them just like everyone else, and I did. They were included in games and activities, and not necessarily the last chosen to be on a team. We kids would have felt the wrath of parents and other community members if we’d bullied them. We weren’t saints, and within our close groups we were known to call someone stuck up, in the manner of town kids and those from the country not mixing much, but we’d have been chastised mightily if we’d gone public with it, which really never occurred to us. One reason was that our parents spoke respectfully, even of those with whom they disagreed. Our coaches benched anyone who pulled a cheap shot.
My mom and dad were of different political persuasions and I was party to many discussions about why they would, or wouldn’t vote for a candidate, but they stressed that one should respect the office, even if the person wasn’t necessarily on the up and up. Same with teachers. “She is your teacher. You may not like her much or agree with what she does, but you won’t speak ill of her in this house.”
I’m not sure when that all changed but maybe, one family at a time, we might sway the tide of bullying. Heaven knows, not much else we have tried seems to work.
Meet me here next week and meanwhile, do your best. Somebody might like it.