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By Root 1037 0

by a bully girl in her class, “Your parents bought you off a shelf in China because nobody wanted you. Nobody wanted girls.” The little girl had nightmares for months about being “purchased” and having a price tag on her arm. She kept wondering how much she was sold for. And she worried that if her adoptive parents could buy her, maybe someone else could buy her from them. When her mother approached the bully girl’s mom to talk through the situation, the bully girl’s mom just laughed and said, “Sometimes kids say the silliest things, don’t they?” Clearly she didn’t understand the impact of what had happened, nor was she willing to.

Another little girl had her arms squeezed so hard by a first grade classmate that she was terrified she couldn’t get away. He was much larger than her and actually left bruises on her arms. When the mom told the teacher about it, the teacher said, “Oh, he was just trying to be friendly.” But the mom pursued the issue with the principal of the school, since it was the third occasion on which the boy had squeezed her daughter. She was worried that the next time the boy would break her daughter’s arm.

A fourth grade boy was told he was a “girly boy” because he didn’t like to play football with the boys during lunch hour. The next day someone put a pink tutu in his locker and taped pink ballerina shoes and the word gay on the front of his locker. Ian was devastated. He’s now in seventh grade, but he’ll never forget that moment. He’s wondered ever since if he is gay.

A second grade girl spent her recess hiding from two boys who liked to “play catch” by flinging her back and forth between them.

Bullies who are not stopped in their tracks merely become older bullies who are more dangerous. In some locales, today’s bullies carry knives and guns, depending on the neighborhood and their age. (And not only gang members are bullies; bullies can be very clean-looking types too.) They’re the kids in the back alley behind the school who catch other kids walking out and try to force them to smoke or do other drugs. They’re the boys in the locker room who catch a boy who doesn’t have a big penis, strip him down to his jockstrap, and force him to walk into the hallway in front of the girl he has a crush on. They’re the girls who tell a new girl on the scene that to be cool, she has to have oral sex with one of the soccer players.

If such a thing happens to your child, go immediately to a teacher you trust. If you see no action from the teacher, go to the principal. Bullying is not anything to mess around with. It’s a mountain to tackle immediately, no matter which side of the coin you are on.

If your child is the one bullying other children, go for the jugular. Confront your child forcefully, when you are the only audience: “Are you really that insecure that you have to bully other kids?” This will cut to the chase because no child wants to admit he’s insecure. Or that he picked on someone younger and smaller just to feel better about himself. Ask your child why he did what he did. Explain how the other child felt about what happened, how you feel about what happened, and what kind of behavior you expect out of your child from this point forward. Insist that your child apologize as soon as possible to the child he wronged. It helps to cement the lesson if you are present to make sure this happens. In order to have emotional restitution, the bully must say, “I’m sorry for hurting you. It won’t happen again.”

But here’s the important part. If your child is truly sorry, you need to allow him to move on. In other words, don’t be a bone digger. We parents have the tendency to go back and whack our kids over the head with something they’ve done earlier. We love to constantly remind them of their failure so they’ll be “good.”

As embarrassing as it is to be the parent of a bully, keep in mind that, as a parent, you’ll face lots of crises. Your job is to deal with them as best you can, then move on. Training children takes time. They’ll make mistakes. You’ll make mistakes. Remember the democratic society rule?