Speaking Out Against Bullying

There was yet another school shooting this week, leaving two 12 year-old children wounded and one teacher and the 13 year-old shooter dead.  My first thought was, how badly was this child bullied that, at 13, he resorted to murder-suicide?  Many others choose to think of him at yet another troubled child, or the handy go-to of gun control.

When I posted about this latest incident, with my opinion that bullying is an epidemic that needs addressed NOW, I had no fewer than five people say to me that kids "need to learn to deal with bullying".  Why?  Why is it acceptable that children have to learn to endure peer-perpetrated abuse like it's some rite of passage in life?  As my husband so aptly said, "Why should we have to play the bullies' game?"  Why do the abusers of society get to set the rules, and why don't more people stand up against this scourge on humanity?  People do not need to do this, or endure this.  It continues because too many people accept it; few are those who are willing to be the proverbial squeaky wheel.

I thought deeply on this after we were offered the opportunity to share my daughter's bullying story with our local news.  Did I want to throw our family into the spotlight?  No.  However, I have always felt a responsibility to share with others what I could when going through difficulties.  I have always believed in being a beacon of hope whenever possible.  My daughter felt the same calling, so we agreed to the interview.

You can say that bullying exists throughout life, and because of that, kids need to learn early on how to deal with it.  My question is always WHY.  Why is it acceptable for the bullies to commit peer-perpetrated abuse against their classmates, co-workers, etc., but people who stand up against it are wrong for interfering with the natural order of things?  Something is seriously wrong with our society.

Today, my very brave little girl stood up for herself and for others who have been the victims of bullying.  Her courage to discuss her own pain said that it is not okay for this to continue, and that those who are being victimized have allies.  I am incredibly proud of her for doing this.  She is my hero.

The Schools Are Pathological, Not The Kids

I read this article today, and it claims that 1 in 10 boys at age 10 are taking prescription meds for ADHD.  I was appalled, and yet sadly unsurprised.  My opinion might not be popular, but I do not believe that many children have a disorder, any disorder so severe that they need to be drugged.  Of course, doctors who want financial kickbacks from the drugs they shove on everyone and teachers who want obedient little zombies will tell you that the drugs will bring out the best in your child and make your and your child's life better. 

Photo credit: stoptherobbery.com

Now, I get that some people do have focus problems, and among them there is a subset who struggle so severely that they do, for a period of time or in certain circumstances, require intervention.  Drugs, though, should be an absolute last resort after all other options have been completely exhausted - and I'm not just talking about the patience of parents and teachers, which I believe is frequently the case.

I'm not necessarily blaming the parents and teachers; the Every Kid Gets a Trophy generation is grown up, and things have only gotten worse as they start having children of their own.  Generation Y has been raised on Ritalin and happy pills, while the real problems that exist in families and classrooms are not properly addressed.  Unhappy?  Here's a pill, because you must have depression.  Stressed out?  Here's another pill, because you must have anxiety disorder.  Having trouble concentrating in school?  Obviously you have ADHD, because there's no way it has anything to do with the mundane, repetitive, unfulfilling experience you shuffle through day in and day out with little to no reward for your efforts beyond what all those standardized tests say.

The larger problem is the structure of our society, particularly traditional education and the increasing demands on children with the concurrent deterioration of the real work of childhood, namely play.  Children need free time to grow and develop, but when are they getting it?  Childhood has been pathologized like a disease, while at the same time, schools are removing recess, shortening lunch and free periods, and burdening kids with huge homework loads so that they have no free time to develop who they are as people.  I guarantee that more free time, play time, recess time, and/or physical activity would do a child far more good than any prescription drug.  Big Pharma would disagree, as would the people who want that child's time to be their own.  I guess it works for the system, doesn't it?  Make sure kids' time is always accounted for, keep pouring information that they care little or nothing about into their heads like empty containers, structure their lives to the point they have no say or will, and medicate them into submission when they appear restless, frustrated, bored (termed ADHD, oppositional/defiant, and autistic by allopaths and drug companies).

Parents largely turn to doctors and drugs to help them with their children because the direction of our society.  When I grew up, my dad worked and my mother stayed at home.  Mother was a fast food junkie, but when she wanted to cook and we sat down for family dinners, it was great.  It was close and I felt like part of a family.  The painful regimentation of children's schedules, testing for the sake of scores to bring money into school districts, the degeneration of the family unit, the mountains of homework which effectively obliterates any potential family time and adds stress to the household, the epidemic of bullying, not to even mention the poison in our food, courtesy of Monsanto, are all contributing factors to the problems our children (as a societal whole) face today.

Even as a child, I realized the flaws in education.  Of course, at the time, I was simply a child who was annoyed with school and early mornings.  People do not generally listen to children.  That, in my opinion, is a mistake.  To maintain my sanity, I would ask multiple times per day to go to the restroom because I was so painfully bored in class.  The days were, in my opinion, far too long.  It felt wrong, and I often compared it to a 13-year prison sentence, having to be forced out of bed, day after day, into a place I didn't want to be with my perfectly age-matched peers.  Why were children treated so poorly, I wondered.  I used to look around at my classmates, wondering how they managed to sit there, still and at least feigning the appearance of attention, for that duration.  That was not how I learned.  I suspect, if I were that child in school now, people would recommend Ritalin or some mind-numbing drug to shove me into submission.  I was simply bored, and I don't comprehend how people can't grasp the concept that many children probably are.  That's not a disorder; it's the way the education system is set up that is pathological.

I consider traditional public schools to be brainwashing centers and prisons for children which slowly but surely detach them from their families and drain their will, individuality, and curiosity from them.  Education is not about learning, it's about test scores and money.  Children are miserable, then they get drugged, and then a portion of them do crazy things and people wonder why.  Healthcare has become sick care, where doctors no longer treat the disease, but prescribe pills to mask symptoms and to deal with normal feelings and emotions.  Childhood has become a disease with a number of diagnoses.  People are no longer eccentric, daydreamers, creative, or strong-willed; now they are autistic, ADHD, defiant, and need to be medicated.

The public education system needs serious overhauling.  Will it actually happen?  Not soon enough, if ever.  The trajectory doesn't look good, and I have little hope.

This is why I homeschool.

Recommended reading: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, Thomas Moore

Devolving

When the internet first started becoming popular, I immediately protested and said I wanted nothing to do with it.  As far as I could tell, this was yet another stupid fad and people were spending entirely too much time - in 1997, mind you - staring at computer screens.  But then I started college, and with all of the wonderful free software they provided me and the size of the reports I had to write, I relented and decided to get a computer.

Admittedly, I was quite fascinated with the large electronic setup now hanging out on my old desk, whining its way through its very first dial-up connection while my mind began entertaining the various possibilities available to me via internet searches.  I'd heard of chatrooms, and I did find myself in a Korn one (don't hate) with a bunch of kids who thought they were, like, so totally awesome because they knew their way around a few simple commands.  That scene lost its luster real quickly.  I suppose I had this exciting, utopian view of the social networking world being much more like it is now, with people sharing real things and having meaningful debates.  I didn't consider the endless, monotonous stream of location check-ins, pictures of various unappetizing food fare, or the incredible number of parents willing to post inappropriate and humiliating pictures of their own children; but, truth be told, I do enjoy many of the interactions I have through social media.

Eventually, in the days before MySpace and Facebook, I did find some interesting message boards to participate in; I even designed my own Webpage, which was popular for more than a decade and brought literally thousands of people into my life.  I certainly spend more time online than I care to admit to, and I wonder how many valuable hours of my life have been wasted laughing at cat pictures featuring funny captions or reading satire.  However, the internet has afforded me an outlet for my desire to write and research.  It has also been an invaluable source of information on a vast array of topics of personal interest, including Monsanto, organic gardening, health, DIY projects, and home remedies.  Just in the past two weeks alone, I learned how to do hair highlights at home, format my SD card on my Mac, and how to get the Mac to see the SD card.  Money and time saved.  The internet helped me to discover that my migraines were aspartame poisoning, when all of modern medicine failed me, and I got my life back by simply not drinking diet beverages ever again.  It allows me to homeschool my children through K12.  It provides the convenience of shopping online, so I don't have to spend a day walking around some mall that I hate, looking for something they might not even have; I can now accomplish in minutes what might have taken hours or longer.  So maybe those cat memes aren't so terrible after all.

But there is the dark side of the internet.  We are new to this, the 30-somethings.  We don't really grasp the full reach of this new cyber world and how "out there" we've really become.  It ranges from annoying to downright dangerous.  That post of your drunk ass in a trash can in a bar might be funny while you're still wasted, but in the morning when your boss that you don't recall "friending" sees it, you might be out of a job.  And the "sexting", how many lives, relationships, and reputations has that destroyed?  We don't always make good choices, but the internet is a permanent record of things that were once lost with the sands of time.  I'm very glad I'm not a teenager right now.

While I generally avoid the more heinous social faux pas of the online world, the great joy I once took in being able to do in minutes in the convenience of my home what once took hours upon hours in a library is also taking a turn for the sewer.  A Google search now turns up search engines within search engines and pages which are nothing more than a collection of keywords, because people buy URLs so they can get paid-per-click, and they will spam you half to death to get you to click.  I feel as if I have been relegated to a few of the better-known sites I found when the internet was far more searchable than it is now, though even many of those have sold out to the point that their pages are 80% ads and 20% content.  The flashing ones, or those featuring particularly shocking or disgusting photos are the real slums and back alleys of the internet.  Even YouTube, which still remains fairly user-friendly, no longer uses the ratings in their search; you have to actually click on the videos before you find out whether it's total garbage, like a fake video telling you to follow a URL to an actual video...supposedly.

The internet is devolving, like the rest of things that humans have a hand in.  We find fossil fuels?  We use them all up.  We find beautiful land?  We destroy it for profit and erect concrete societies.  Locally grown?  Why, when we can be selfish and destroy the planet so we can eat that out-of-season food and run our local farmers right out of their livelihoods?  It's about want, not need, right?  Why improve our health with exercise when we can pop a pill for each health concern?  Why look on the bright side when there's an SSRI to boost your mood?  Why pay the farmer when you can simply pay the doctor and the pharmacy?

Human beings are a disease.  We consume everything we come in contact with.  Just look at Superfund sites, Monsanto, oil spills, nuclear accidents, and any of the other sad atrocities we're responsible for.  We have this amazing technological gift of the internet, and we're turning it into yet another cesspool.  It's sad, really.  But that's okay.  Something better will come along, right?  Something more advanced and higher-tech, and we can leave this lay in ruin behind us as we advance to the next thing we can build up just to destroy.

Scouts

I don't know how I feel about Girl Scouts. I've been debating getting my daughter involved in Scouts for a couple of years now, a consideration which has been more at the forefront of my mind since we began homeschooling last year. I want my children to have as many opportunities to socialize in a healthy environment as they can/want.

I emphasize healthy social opportunities. With this in mind, my feelings on Boy Scouts are much more clear; I don't want my son being part of an organization that openly discriminates against the LGBT community and bans people from leadership positions within the organization based on their orientation. I find it extremely sad that if same-gender couple had a son in Boy Scouts, neither of them could contribute in a leadership role for their son's troop. This goes against the values we are teaching our children (love, acceptance), so I'm not comfortable with his participation in such an organization.

Boy Scouts also takes a firm position on requiring that its participants to follow a religion:

"The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, ‘On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.’ The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members."

This bothers me as well. We are not religious people in the traditional sense. I consider myself an Agnostic with Buddhist leanings, but this is more a way of life than a "religion", so to speak. The Boy Scouts of America statement is really offensive to me, because it implies that my children, my husband, and I are not capable of being among the best citizens no matter who we are outside of our beliefs. I have no problem at all with what anyone else believes, but I have a very big problem with others telling me what I or my children must believe, or making judgements about my character based on whether or not I share their faith - or one they approve of.

Girl Scouts does appear to be far more inclusive with their policies. They even allowed transgender member Bobby Montoya to participate. Girl Scouts of Colorado spoke out through GLAAD and released the following statement on transgender youth participating in Girl Scouts:

"If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout."

I was super impressed with this. It made me want to run out and buy a box of Girl Scout cookies. If only the Boy Scouts of America could step out of the stone ages and follow suit. It's 2012, folks.

I'm still on the fence as to whether I want my daughter to participate in Girl Scouts. I've heard there are troops with very religious leanings, and those which tend to be very secular. I'm not sure about the local troop, though I do know that they hold meetings in a church and plaster photos of the girls all over a very public Facebook page. I'm not so comfortable with that, so it seems unlikely. Fortunately, K12 offers opportunities for social interaction. We also have soccer, classes through our community arts centers, and various other ways to stay connected. My kids burn out on socializing fairly quickly anyhow, being on the spectrum, so our needs are less than average to begin with.

The Aurora Shooting: Why?

In the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, CO, people around the country are up in arms, debating the reasons why something like this would happen. The first wave came from the anti-gun folks who believe that banning guns would prevent mass murders. I disagree; people who are bent on destruction and large-scale acts of violence and terrorism will not be deterred by the absence of one form of weapon. After all, 9/11 claimed 3,000 lives, and no guns were required. People can be very creative, and unfortunately, that creativity can be used for awful things as well as positive things.

The second wave came from people who believe that violence in movies and video games is to blame for our violence-prone culture. I don't believe this, either.



Canada has the same video games, movies, and music we do, and they also have one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world; yet, the rates of homicide are significantly lower there than in the United States (above image from Wikipedia). What, then, could the difference be between our country and other developed countries? Why are Americans so violent?

One statistic that is higher in the U.S. than in any other country in the world is the rate of children and adolescents on psychotropic medication.

While mental disorders can be associated with higher rates of crime, examining the issue further reveals that the drugs used to treat certain psychiatric conditions can actually cause brain damage in children and adolescents, and can increase suicidal and violent behavior. Over-medicating children could very well be causing some of the issues leading to violent acts. In fact, many of the school shooters are known to have been taking antidepressant medications at the time they committed their violent acts.

The other issue is the entitlement factor Americans have. We are a country built on consumption and excess. We are inundated with advertisements on television, on the internet, in our e-mail inboxes, on billboards, on the radio, and even over our phones telling us to buy. We replace things out of desire, not due to need. In an unrelenting stream of messages that imply, and sometimes state outright that we can buy happiness, it is no wonder that Americans spend themselves into ridiculous amounts of debt in a futile effort to finally reach the point where they have "enough".

As a result, people are struggling to pay for homes they cannot afford, eating themselves to obesity and disease, dying of completely preventable diseases directly tied to over-consumption, and finding themselves wondering why "having it all" doesn't equate to good feelings. I am firmly convinced that a lot of our supposed mental illness is often a direct result of this.

We're "supposed to be" happy, financially stable, healthy, and free to have fun as often as we like. We believe things should be handed to us. We take so much for granted, and experience suffering and feelings of slight when we go without things that people in some countries have never been able to experience. We have celebrities living in homes costing millions of dollars with more space than any human being could ever possibly need while children starve in the streets of the same cities, and society lifts these selfish, shallow creatures up to god-like status. When reality happens and this fairytale does not, most people handle it - if disappointedly. Others, unable to cope with the disparity between what we're told should happen and what actually does happen, lose it. What 'losing it' means will vary by person, but the results can be pretty awful. Can't we change this?

While evolution has brought us more in sync with our humanity and fellow souls on this planet, our technology and obsession with having stuff is removing us from it. Our competitive culture, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and a lesser degree of obvious interdependence are a destructive combination. Improving the situation in our country isn't going to happen by way of gun control, restricting movie content, or having the condition of childhood medicated out of every kid so they're "perfect" little robots. Nothing improves by taking away rights and crippling free speech. We need to start respecting one another more, especially our children. We need to stop talking and start listening. We need to open our wallets less and open our hearts and minds more. We need to focus on really teaching our children things that are worthwhile instead of cramming information into their heads like containers so they can make schools look good on paper; such practices are meaningless and destructive to the spirit and our society, because no one will care about test scores 100 years from now.

The greatest, most respected people in history were not the kind of people who fit neatly into predetermined little packages of what society wanted of them. They also didn't go shooting up schools and theaters. Einstein, Galileo, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Nicola Tesla, Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ghandi; none of these people were/are traditional, sit down and obey, go with the flow followers. Encouraging conformity, submission, fear, and obedience is not the answer, for it will stifle potential and cripple society further. Restoring our humanity is the answer, and shifting our focus away from this plastic, money-worshipping culture of greed and selfishness that can only foster envy and bring out the worst in people, that is what we need to do.

I wish to extend my sincerest condolences to those affected by the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. Peace be with you all.