I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have gone back and forth on writing this post. I can’t tell you how many times I have started writing this post, hit delete, started again, erased half it, and then come back once again.
It is the hardest blog post I think I have ever written thus far. For so many reasons. I want to protect my child’s privacy. I want to protect the other parties’ (and boy, does my husband think this is misguided) privacy as well. I want—so very desperately—for the situation to die down and go away. I don’t know if it will die down and go away—let’s face it; things don’t really tend to do that in the real world.
And yet, I know, deep down in my heart, that the one thing I can do to start the process of letting this go is to actually write it out and hit submit. Not just for my own peace of mind either—but for those who go through similar circumstances. For my son, who may read this someday, and really need the reassurance that this kind of shit is not his fault. To answer my own questions-- in my mind and in my heart.
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The worst feeling I have ever had as a mother happened on Monday. I hope you never have it. There is nothing worse than the fact that your child needs help, and it’s not your help that they need. That your child has a situation on their hands, and it is going to require the assistance of someone with more power than you.
Sometimes it’s a doctor, or a psychologist, or a teacher. In our case, it was the police.
My son has a bully. A lot of the neighborhood kids, in fact, have a bully. The bullying has gone on for over a year, but we’ve limited it significantly. Let’s just say that we didn’t really get a chance to discuss the situation with the bully’s parents, and leave it at that. The bullying has almost always been verbal, and we’ve worked extensively with him on how to handle verbal bullying. We’ve helped our son figure out ways to avoid confrontation. I honestly can’t say how much of this sinks in, because boys this age think they can handle any situation that is handed to them, but I will say that all of the behavior I’ve witnessed from my son thus far shows that a good chunk of it is sticking. We thought the bullying was on the decline.
A great experience for someone his age to learn how to deal with others who you may not like later in life, right?
But he didn’t tell us when it turned physical. He bottled it up. Until Monday morning, at the bus stop, when there was no more room, and he exploded. After being hit repetitively by the bully that morning, he hit them. One hit, blood everywhere, bullying immediately stopped. This is not a new story. We see it all over the place—and frankly, when we were children, this was sort of the order of things. I would not have been so worried about this, by itself.
But the bully’s mother then physically attacked my son. He is okay. He didn’t even come and tell me, after it was over. He just got on the bus and went to school. Witnesses to the attack went to school, told their teachers, and then the office. The story was confirmed, the police were involved, and my son was physically examined and counseled. It was a horrifically grueling day for me—I cannot even begin to imagine how he felt.
***
Except he’s told me a bit about how he felt. Angry. Momentarily relieved, after he hit the other child. Then shocked and frightened, and not just from being attacked by an adult. He was afraid he had disfigured the bully for life. He would never be able to overcome the guilt.
My son’s not in trouble—not at school, not with the police, and not at home. Several kids at his school—especially those who had also been tormented by the bully—are venerating him.
I’m left in turmoil, with tons of questions. I don’t have questions about why the child is bullying others, or why the child’s mother thought it was appropriate to attack a minor. I have some formulated opinions on those issues. I don’t question why we have bullies in the world, in general, or why bullying seems to be on the increase in the past few years, or why the tactics we taught our son didn’t work like we had hoped. There are a multitude of reasons for that as well.
I wonder why it happened to my son—average size and build, normal number of friends, the usual activities and social interactions—and especially why my son thought it was just something he was going to have to deal with.
I have always tried to teach my children the difference between the things you just have to deal with, the things you can change for the better, and the things you better get help on immediately: you have to deal with what I cook for dinner tonight, for better or worse. You can fix a fight between you and a friend. If someone places you in an uncomfortable position, you better find a parent to help you out, pronto.
No man is an island. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said this.
I question if, somehow, something I did made him a victim of this. Did I teach him to trust others too much? Did we mistakenly instruct our children to be compassionate? Or did we not pay enough attention? Should I have been able to read some sign, should I have ascertained that something was coming down the pike, and even then, what could I have done about it?
Was there something I could have done to make this NOT happen? Did I fail?
That night, when finally, everything was quiet, my son asked me, “What do you think God was trying to teach me by all of this? What does it all mean?” It did not scare me that I didn’t have the answer to that—it scared me that I was asking the same damn thing, and still coming up with nothing.
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