October
is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month here in the US, and I’ve been trying for
weeks now to think of the right way to share our family’s story from the past
year. Blogging about real children is a tightrope walk—you never want to share
anything too painful or too raw, or anything that your child feels is too personal.
But you do want to share those universal moments that might resonate with other
parents and kids who are struggling. Because sometimes those shared moments
weave together to form a net that catches people when they are falling, helping
them feel a little less alone in the void. So here goes the tightrope walk (my
son gets the final edit).
A
little over a year ago, our family moved to a small town just south of the
suburb where we had lived for all of my 12-year-old son’s life. We had lots of good reasons for moving, and
both kids were ready for the adventure of a new beginning. Our older son
already knew a handful of kids at his new school through sports, and he quickly
acclimated to his changed environment.
Our
younger son—who is delightfully quirky and enthusiastically intellectual—found
himself in a country grade school where he knew no one, surrounded by kids who were
nothing like him. He delighted in reading. They delighted in kicking him in the
shins under his desk when he pulled out a book. He loved to grapple with
difficult math problems. They loved to sneer and mock him for loving what they
hated. He had a malformed, smaller left hand, and he was surrounded by kids who
refused to tolerate differences.
Day
by day, they peeled away his confidence and his well-being and his sense of
self. They carved him with whispered taunts, cutting away at how he saw
himself, until all that was left was a shell of the boy he had been. Tears.
Panic. Daily heartache. And that was before the day last spring when he was
attacked on the playground. A single punch to the mouth left him bleeding and
stitched and swollen, unable to eat solid food for over a week. The classroom teacher
truly ached for him and tried to help, but she and I agreed that the best
solution for my son was to get away from there, to start over in a school with
kids more like him.
We
found our silver lining in a new school this year in a district not far from here—another
year of being the new kid, but with much different results. My son has found
his tribe. When he brings up
questions about wormholes and time travel in science class, the other students
mull over and discuss his ideas, never even considering that the concepts might
be unusual. He passes notes with a friend coded via the Periodic
Table. He jokes with his pals about his “lucky hand" and shares the hallways with a stellar athlete who has no hand at all. He has friends. He is happy. We
are happy.
But
what happens to those kids who came so close to destroying him last year? How
do they grow past their brutish tendencies when the people who are different
from them are chased away? How do they learn to be anything more than what they
are? What will they do in the larger world when they are faced with people who
are disabled, or gay, or culturally different from them? The thought makes
me almost unbearably sad.
Yesterday
afternoon, I read a delightful book that could be part of the solution. Wonder, by R.J. Palacio is an
exceptionally written middle-grade novel that captures the pain of bullying so
poignantly, so beautifully, that the story and its message resonate long after
the last page is turned. If I were still teaching (grades 4-6), I would buy a
class set of this novel, and we would spend the month of October reading and discussing it to lay a foundation for mutual understanding and to facilitate a culture
of kindness. Even if you don’t routinely read children’s books just for the joy
of experiencing the quality literature being produced in that category today,
you should make an exception for this book. But have tissues handy. Really.
“…
in the future you make for yourselves, anything is possible. If every single
person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you
will try to act a little kinder than is necessary—the world really would be a
better place.”
Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
Bullying
is not just an October problem. It’s an everyday, everywhere problem that can only
be solved when people consciously remove themselves from the neutral bystander
camp and become protectors of the least of us. This month, and every day of
every single other month, do what you can in your world to foster mutual
understanding and compassion.
Please
leave your ideas and comments below.
