Can We Blame the Parents and Teachers, Not the Victims?

I've seen a lot of articles recently about how to help your child avoid being bullied or what to do if your child is being bullied. And I'm not saying that those articles don't have value, but talk about blaming the victim. The same with Dan Savage's wonderful "It Gets Better" movement. It's great, but how sad is it that we have to convince gay teenagers to not kill themselves? What kind of country are we living in?

Well, I think we're living in a country where some parents and teachers are perfectly content to let their kids be assholes. Kids aren't born to bully, but they are born to be clique-y and distrustful of those who are in some way "different." If that goes unchecked, you get bullies.

For example, a friend's daughter recently started a new preschool and daycare. It has a good reputation and my friend was impressed with the curriculum and teachers. The daughter, let's call her G., is a sweet, friendly kid. So she went up to kids at her new school and asked them to play. They said no. Day after day, they wouldn't play with her, wouldn't share toys with her, called her a baby and wouldn't let her sit at the table with them. And the teachers did nothing. (Don't worry, G. is going somewhere else now.) Did I mention that these little darlings were 4?

I watch it on the playground at Ironflower's elementary school every day  - kids telling other kids they won't play with them, or name calling, or being unfriendly to new kids. Most of the time parents try to stop the name calling or physical aggression, but they don't seem to notice exclusionary practices at all. And I really think that bullying starts when we make it okay to view some kids as "other".

If we don't correct them, if we don't teach them to play with the new kid or include everyone, we are setting them up to be bullies some day.

On the first day of kindergarten - and yes, I remember it this clearly - a little boy's sister walked him to where we were all lined up. We had seen their progress from the house they exited next door to the school and some of the kids were quite appalled that this boy had had to be walked all the way to the line. That just wasn't done then. So he got teased.

He didn't know how to handle it - being 5 and all - and got enraged. It was exactly what the other kids were looking for. They started tormenting him then and they never stopped. I don't remember a teacher ever doing anything about it. I don't remember anyone even talking about it as a bad thing until I was in high school.

I didn't tease him myself, but I didn't befriend him. I didn't even defend him until he was in my history class in 10th grade and 2 boys that we'd both known since kindergarten started picking on him AGAIN. By then he was big and awkward and friendless and paranoid and I was totally shocked when he didn't thank me for getting those boys off of his back. He probably thought I was setting him up for worse.

I always think about him and feel bad when I hear about bullying. The teacher in our history class heard the whole thing, as I'm sure all our other teachers had. But none of them did anything about it. And neither did any of the parents who overheard - people didn't feel right saying anything unless their own child was involved.

I think we all need to get over that. And we need to stop bullying when it starts - in preschool.