The issue of bullying has been coming up a lot lately. Bullying has always been a problem, but it does seem to be worse today, leading even to suicide. Is it actually more rampant, or is it only that we are more aware of it? In a discussion of the issue on Facebook this week, a friend of mine theorized that the real problem is that thanks to social media in the form of FB, cell phones, etc., kids can’t get any reprieve from the bullying. When they leave school and go home, they are still bullied through awful, hurtful comments.<\/p>\n
I was bullied when I was in elementary school. I wasn’t beat up, but the girl (who will remain nameless, as this isn’t a smear campaign) threatened to do so on a regular basis, despite my many attempts to be her friend. She did live near me, so I thought it would be nice to have a friend close by to play with. I guess she didn’t think so. To this day, I don’t know why she hated me so much, but obviously she did. <\/p>\n
In any case, at least I was able to leave school and go home where I felt safe. That’s not to say I wasn’t tormented while at home, of course. Things moved along the grapevine even before smartphones. I would hear from a friend of mine who had heard it from someone else who was friends with the girl who hated me (because, funny enough, she and I did have some mutual friends) that she was going to beat me up the next day. Never mind the fact that she had never followed through on this promise, other than to have some other people join her to gather around me and kick some snow at me and call me names. I was young and scared, and I always worried that this time, she really did mean it.<\/p>\n
It did get worse on one occasion, in the latter years of elementary school. I’m not going to get into specifics, but it basically ended up with me running home crying, and then my sister storming off to… I don’t know, beat them up? Thank god they were gone by the time she got there, as she was considered to be an adult by then, and they weren’t. Man, what a mess that would have been!<\/p>\n
Anyway, funny enough, it was after that incident that I finally grew a pair. Maybe it was because it did get worse that time, but I got through it, so I became braver after that. And once that fear disappeared, especially by high school (we don’t have junior high in Quebec), I was no longer afraid of her. With the absence of fear, she finally left me alone. We still butted heads from time to time because a) our high school was pretty small, and b) we sat with some of the same people (well, the nicer ones who were friends with her). Then she left that school and went somewhere else.<\/p>\n
So, we have the bullying. We have parents who allow their young daughters to wear skimpy clothes, or bathing suits with pre-made “breasts” in them. We have teenagers soaking tampons in alcohol and inserting them into their nether regions (boys and girls) to get drunk faster and without the smell of alcohol on their breath. And yet, we continue to have children. In discussing both the bullying and the alcohol-soaked-tampon issues, two different people mentioned they would not want to be raising a child in this day and age. There is peer pressure, and there is an increasing lack of respect for authority among our youth.<\/p>\n
So why do so many of us continue to have children?<\/p>\n
I don’t know what the solution is, but I have had a daughter, and I will never EVER regret it. But that’s not to say that I am not worried about these things. Can we say, however, that worry about what the future holds for one’s child is a new plight for the parent? I don’t think so. In the past, there was a great deal of danger. Bullying and peer pressure, dabbling in drugs and alcohol, none of that is new. It existed in the past, it exists today, and it will continue to exist in the years to come. I will do everything in my power to teach my daughter to respect authority – maybe a little dose of fear will help as well? It sounds awful, but I think one of the problems today is that the youth does not fear the police and think they can get away with anything. I know that to this day, I’m a little nervous around authority figures.<\/p>\n
I will teach Claire to have respect for other people as well, and if – god forbid – she is bullied herself, I will teach her that it’s okay to defend herself. Perhaps not the most Christian response in light of the whole “turn the other cheek” philosophy, but then, I don’t consider myself to be Christian anyway.<\/p>\n
In the end, one of the reasons I decided to have a child was for hope. That is what a child represents, all of the hope the future may hold. I understand that it is MY responsibility to teach my child right from wrong, and regardless of the fact that I have a career, my most important job is as a mother. I will teach her that nothing gained through harm to another is worth having.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The issue of bullying has been coming up a lot lately. Bullying has always been a problem, but it does seem to be worse today, leading even to suicide. Is it actually more rampant, or is it only that we … Continue reading