Here’s your merit badge for pedantry. I don’t like the idea that it’s ok to tell kids that there is something wrong with them when they can’t stand up to their bullies, I just think that is. I don’t even think it is a ‘thing’ as ‘bullying’ is only used when you’re young and in school. It’s more like a behavior. What do you think about the way I’ve used this? Is it okay or not?
The reason that I think it’s an important discussion to have is because it helps kids understand that they are not alone and have options when they are being bullied. And there are a number of ways in which that can be done. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I have four boys ages 7, 10, 13 and 17. If you think about how the typical life of a pre-teen boy is filled with socializing, dating, bullying, you can get a pretty good idea of where I’m going with this topic, and that’s the heart of it.
But the idea that telling boys they can stand up for themselves and help someone else by doing so, is dangerous territory. That’s because it requires them to think about hurting another person. It means being selfish. It means taking something away from someone else to benefit you. And that’s wrong.
To be clear, I don’t have a problem with boys who are victims. Kids need to be taught to stand up for themselves. Just like women need to learn how to stop being taken advantage of by bullies, boys also need to learn how to stop being abused by those who would exploit them. I just don’t like bullies and I don’t like bullies pretending to be victims. I think boys are better off learning from the negative examples of the few bullies that seem to be everywhere than from a generation of boys who have been made to believe that it’s okay to be bullied and even more okay to see someone else being bullied. I have two teenage sons and I would rather see them learning from my example than from this generation of kids that seems to think that it is acceptable to bully.
The fact is, if we don’t give kids a good way to stop being bullied, then they are the ones that are going to suffer. Because they are going to believe they’ve learned that there is nothing wrong with being bullied. And so if they do get bullied again, they’ll be less likely to stand up for themselves because they’ve learned that it isn’t effective.
Maybe boys will learn differently from girls, but one thing I don’t want them to learn is that it’s ok to bully anyone. Bullies are bullies because they don’t feel strong enough to cope with life on their own. But we need to empower the bullies as well as the bullied by giving them more positive options. We can do this by teaching them to bully in a positive way instead of having the only examples they see of bullying be those who get bullied and who then want revenge on the bullies. I know it seems very unfair of me to hold someone responsible for what they were not taught, but we are responsible for them. It’s our job as parents to instill those qualities into them.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I had a new-found respect for what happened to me the first time I experienced a migraine. Having had migraine since before I was diagnosed, I thought it was my duty to suffer through the first migraine of my life again, and make an honest effort to understand it from an even more objective perspective. Sure, I get it, but what was I doing?
I tried to get all up-in-arms about what they were doing to me and it didn’t work, they just shrugged and said “get over it,” in an odd accusatory tone. They treated me like I was the disease and they were merely trying to assist me with making it go away. For some reason, they were making it my problem. I couldn’t understand why, though. If anything, I could use my knowledge to help myself, right? But no, they wanted to control my mind for some reason. They didn’t need to explain it, but I wish they would.
My first response to the second time I went through the routine was to ignore them. Not their presence, that is something that has always just been there and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if I was sitting next to them or a thousand miles away from them. Their presence is always there in my consciousness as if I’m seeing things through a tunnel and they’re on the other side of the tunnel watching me as if they’re looking into a distorted looking glass and they want to see what it would look like if they stood close enough. But I have no need to listen to them at this point. When I’m looking at something, I’m looking for something. If I can’t find it, I can’t see it. The light from my brain is enough for me. If I decide it would be better for me to look a little closer, then I simply turn the beam of light to a more focused version, so it can find the object. Or, if I decide that there is something important to me on the other side of the tunnel, then I can turn the beam of light away from the side where the mirror is so I can see what it would look like if someone were staring back at me through the mirror. They can look through the mirror and see everything I see, but if they don’t make any movements to adjust their perspective, then I won’t see them and if they decide to walk away from the mirror, I won’t see them either.
I don’t have to worry about seeing them, though. I’ve given them their chance to explain to me what they were trying to do, but all I saw was an incessant, demanding, incessantly irritating presence that was making me feel physically uncomfortable. Because of that, I couldn’t make them make sense. When they started talking, they could show me that they know the right way to take care of my migraine, I just couldn’t grasp that because of my perspective on the migraine. I simply couldn’t get over the fact that I needed to see something, anything, that was physically uncomfortable to be a migraine. I couldn’t have the migraine be comfortable with being a migraine. I had to have it being something more. I had to know what it was, because if I just left it in the middle of nowhere to fend for itself, the chances were pretty good that something would eventually happen to it and it would dissipate into nothing. So, I started to get upset. And when I’m upset, I tend to take it out on people. So, it’s easier for them to say “don’t be stupid, why are you getting so upset about this? Just feel a little uncomfortable and let your body deal with it.”
And I guess that would have been the end of it if not for their constant and incessant irritation. If that is what they can do with my perspective, then they can do anything, right? And that’s true. If I just let my perspective go with them and I let them play with my consciousness, then I can see the mirror and my consciousness will adjust to whatever image they decide to shine upon it. If they’re irritating me all the time, then I’m left with no other choice but to push them away. I could just take my consciousness and move it to someplace that would be a little more comfortable, where I could look at the images they throw at me with the least amount of annoyance, but if I’m being constantly irritated, I can’t really enjoy myself and I won’t be able to cope with the unpleasantness I’m in.
They’re the ones that don’t seem to understand the value of the migraine. That pain I experience as if I were being stabbed with a knife every 20 minutes for an entire day, is no different than what I experience just because someone in the world needs something from me. This is the pain that all humans experience, but because it is worse for me, I must have something seriously wrong with me to be able to enjoy it. And this would be funny if I weren’t being annoyed all the time by someone else’s lack of respect for what is happening to me. If I were left alone, this would just be a simple thing. But because they seem to think that I’m some sort of experiment, instead of just another human being, this becomes an issue of control.
Even if I try to explain to them how bad the situation is and that they can get a migraine without any of the usual triggers, they will always find a way to blame someone for giving me a migraine, whether they’re right or not, I can never get them to understand that when I have a migraine, it just happens. If it were possible to prevent the headache that I am experiencing from turning into a migraine, I would do it every time, but it’s not, and once it starts turning into a migraine, there is no real way to prevent the migraine.
But then again, when they explain what they’re trying to do, I also can’t understand why they would be doing what they’re doing. And that’s because it isn’t about
