Bullying

Since before my children were out of diapers, there were many reasons I considered homeschooling them. One of the reasons was bullying. My husband and I always knew that bullying was rampant in schools, though we both quite mistakenly figured it was something that would become an issue down the road - perhaps in junior high school. Boy, were we wrong.

I was excited for my daughter as she anticipated her first ride on the big yellow school bus she had been watching thoughtfully for a couple of years as it made the morning and afternoon routes past our home. But I was also sad, because even the best schools with the most dedicated teachers and brightest students also have bullies. There would be 7 hours every week day where I would have very little information about what was happening in my daughter's life. That's substantial.

My discomfort with the ways of traditional schools didn't stem from the fact that I am a control freak or one of those moms who wants to wrap her kid in pillows and a helmet before sending them out the door; my concerns were based on life experience. And, especially during those early years, a school day is a long time to be separated from family. Young children aren't exactly famous for relaying complete or accurate information about their days away from home, and as any parent of a teen can attest, it doesn't get much better with age.

The first time my sweet girl came home from school with an injury caused by another student, a scrape just beneath her eye, I was quick to give the benefit of the doubt. I asked what happened, and she told me that another child had thrown a snow ball at her, and I assumed it was a result of kids being kids on the playground in the snow. I did not, at the time, know about the school's 'no snow ball throwing' policy. I also did not know, until it happened again with a rock placed inside, that the snow was intentionally thrown at my daughter's face to injure her. The playground monitors? They did nothing. In fact, they didn't even report it to the teacher. But I sure did.

Over the course of the rest of the school year, my daughter was spat on at lunch because she wanted to be friends with another girl who did not want to be friends with her, had her arm clawed by a boy who said he 'just felt like doing that', and was verbally and eventually physically bullied by a team of three students on the bus a year ahead of her.

I went all Mama Bear and had everyone from the principal to the teacher to the bus driver to the guy in charge at the transportation department on speed dial. The teacher was wonderful. The principal really did her best as well. But there is only so much that can be done. But what really got me was when I kept pointing out the district's own bullying policy and stating that I wanted the bullies given time off of the bus, and the request was never taken seriously - but when my daughter caught the bus going up the street instead of down the street a couple of times, we were threatened with time off of the bus! The transportation guy never really liked me again after that.

As Little G's 5th birthday approached, I was already dreading Kindergarten. If my daughter, the well-spoken and much more social child of the two faced such as much bullying as she did, how would my autistic son with a speech disorder fare? It stressed me out immensely. Possibilities played in my head like awful movies; I pictured him being bullied, trying to respond, being unable to speak and being further victimized for that. I had to put it out of my mind. I couldn't bear the thoughts. R pretty much lets stuff roll like water off of a duck. G internalizes and is crushed by it.

Some people have said things to me like, "Well, they have to get used to the real world at some point." And I agree. But I have never been bullied in my adult life, not like kids experience in school. Does it happen? Sure, but it's rare and there are legal options available to adults who are harassed. Children are at the mercy of adults and school systems who often fail them terribly, and victimized by much more traumatic and frequent bullying which they have not developed psychologically enough yet to see for what it is. And statistically speaking, 58% of children never report being bullied. Worse? 1 in 4 children experience bullying.

Too many schools and parents consider bullying a harmless rite of passage. It isn't. Children commit suicide over this. People fail to reach their full potential because of wrecked self-esteem, or avoid doing things they otherwise would to enrich their lives because they fear their peers. Too many kids drop out of school because they cannot handle the social climate, not because the work is too difficult. And what a waste. I often wonder about the casualties of bullying; if the person who would have developed a cure for cancer or some other serious disease was bullied into dropping out of school, or life.

I believe in education. I love to learn, and so do my children. But many children who do receive a great education do so in spite of traditional schools and all of the garbage they encounter there. I'm not saying good kids don't have good experiences, or that kids don't have good times at school, or that all schools are bad, or that a lot of kids can't be really successful. I'm just saying I like our odds better this way. Raising children to be confident, motivated, self-starters who reach for their dreams and are willing to work hard for what they want is difficult enough in this world without the added burden of having to undo the damage of bullying.

Learn more about bullying at BullyingStatistics.org.