because
I was bullied in elementary school. I couldn't do math. I just couldn't understand the concept. Its so long ago now I honestly don't know what the problem was, but the kids tormented me telling me each and every day how stupid I was. We are going back many, many years. My mother went to the principal -- once she found out -- and it stopped immediately. It would have stopped sooner but I was afraid to tell her.
The next generation in our family was lucky. My kids were never teased or tormented in school, but my grands aren't as lucky.
#2 grandson suffered and suffered so badly he had a breakdown. He was 13 years old. It happened the week-end of the last quilt show. His brother said something to him one night and that was it. Our son and daughter-in-law couldn't get out of him what the problem was but the hospital he was admitted to has one of the best children's psychiatrists and just by asking the right questions, found the problem.
Who cared? Not his teachers, not the principal. As a matter of fact one of the teachers leaned back in a chair and worried more about their fingernails. Yeah, you read that right. He never went back to that school. He never went back to school. The fear was embedded in him so deeply he cannot go through the doors of a school. It affected his brother who started to run with the wrong crowd, his Mom and his Dad. You have no idea the hurt it inflicts on a family. You really, really don't until it happens to you.
Now its happening again. My youngest granddaughter snapped one night when her Dad was teasing her. She yelled, she screamed, she cried. Her parents were stunned. No one knew. Our daughter phoned her school and the teacher didn't even have to be told who was the teaser. She knew. She took care of it. Our granddaughter's previous school was zero tolerance -- this school apparently not.
I don't have the answers to bullying. I believe its really in the hands of the parents. The parents of the children that are doing the bullying.
Something has to be done. Bullying is becoming an epidemic that is getting out of hand. Do we charge the parents of the child doing the bullying? I don't know whether that works. I know some of the stories my cousin, the police officer, has told about taking kids home to their parents and if you have straight hair at the beginning, you sure won't have it when he's done.
Let's help the kids out. Let's pull those pink tee-shirts out of our drawers and put them on. No child should have to suffer at the hands of another child from bullying. It isn't just the kids either.
Tomorrow we are back to quilting again. I thought this was just too darned important to let it go by.
