I know its wrong, but I can't help but want to call a four year old a total bitch. I haven't done it, but I'm definitely considering it.
Don't worry, I'm not talking about my own kid, as I have said before, she's more of a jerk, not so much a bitch. Today though, I ran into a little girl who is most definitely a bitch, or, more than likely, the daughter of a bitch and therefore, a bitch in training, and if this kid were 10, I totally would have told her so.
So here's the scenario, I get a call from the school because my daughter got into a fight today, and was complaining that her tummy hurt. As is the preschool protocol I went to pick her up and remove her from the situation.
As I walked in to the school I was greeted by an adorable red headed girl straight from the pages of Peanuts, she looked up and smiled and said "Lily, your mommy has the biggest tummy ever", bitch.
This little red headed pain in my ass and I have run into each other before, the last time when I was called to school, again, because Lily was fighting, the minute I walked in the door the precious angel told me that "Lily was mean and I should take her out of preschool"
At that point, I was already feeling a bit on edge and came back at her with "Yeah? well maybe you should try being nicer to Lily?" which was a lot nicer than what was actually going through my head.
So, the point of this ramble, and the subsequent profanity, is to say that I am dead sick of other peoples rude, and in this case downright bitchy, children.
These fights, which is kind of another issue on its own, have turned out to be becuase my kid is being seriously picked on at school, something I have suspected for awhile but did not have confirmation on until today.
When we got into the car I asked Lily if her tummy really hurt her or if she just didn't want to go to school, for the first time she told me the truth, "Mom, i don't like school, the kids are mean." and I almost cried.
She says that when she has an accident at school she is supposed to go change but Logan won't let her have any privacy to change in the bathroom, so she either 1) doesn't change, resulting in her getting in trouble and made fun of by the other kids, or 2) she pushes him, which makes sense to me on a practical level, if some little shit wouldn't give me any privacy in the bathroom, I'd probably get in a fight with him too.
Logan, along with the little read head, has been a trigger before, the last time I was called to school involved Logan as well. As someone who has worked with kids her whole life, I learned early on that most of the time when kids act out, their parents blame the teachers, and rarely discipline the kids, I didn't want to be one of those parents, so we gave time outs, we lectured and we made changes to her diet (she's hypoglycemic and LOSES it when she doesn't have enough protein) and things seemed to get better.
But now that the changes have been made, and most days are pretty good, until they aren't, I'm starting to sense a trend that has nothing to do with diet.
I started thinking about it, my kid, the smart, noisy, dark, sharing impaired, but generally good tempered potato is fine at home, demanding maybe, but otherwise pretty okay as long as she has plenty of protein in her body, is getting into fights, is hitting, is causing trouble...I don't see it. I don't see it at home, I don't see it around other kids, it seems to only occur at school, and seems to center around the red headed demon, and Logan. So it seems to me, we have a problem, with them, not with Lily.
It isn't right, 4 is too young to start learning that most people are generally ass holes. I really hoped that she would at least make it to second grade before she had to learn that lesson, but here we are.
Husband and I are faced with a choice, accept that some people, and therefore, some people's children, suck, and tell her to stick it out, talk to the school and the parents and raise a big stink, or pull her out and try something new.
We lucked out that a good friend of ours had recently lost her job and was looking to make some money, she has worked with kids for some time, speaks fluent Spanish (which Lily has been learning at school) and is willing to watch her for half what we are paying the daycare, so we made the decision, and I don't know if it was the right one, but its the one we made.
So I can't help but second guess myself on this one, how do you teach a 4 year old to deal with bullies? My first instinct is to congratulate her for standing up for herself, particularly in the bathroom confrontation, but I don't necessarily want her to be a bully herself, and I worry that encouraging her to fight back will just get her in trouble more than it will get the kids to leave her alone.
I read a parenting blog today that suggested inviting the kid over for a play date and getting to know his parents. But I kind of want to deck him, so that might not work. It also suggested engaging the teachers in dialogue about the situation and seeing what they have noticed, maybe that would be a better course of action, if I wasn't so damn furious.
I want my daughter to have strength, and I want her to have understanding, I don't want her to take shit, but I want her to learn to hold her temper, I have tried teaching her the "count to 5 and walk away" method, and I have also told her that if someone is hurting you, its okay to hurt them to make them stop, but then you need to run and tell an adult. I can't get out of her if this was the kind of situation she was dealing with today.
How do I help her without making excuses, and how do I keep her safe without keeping her sheltered?
I have no idea.
My decision to pull her out of school might not be the best decision there is, and certainly isn't practical in the long term, but its the best I could think of today, with a crying 4 year old who is making herself sick worrying about bullies at school.
My question for the rest of you is this, Have your kids, or have you, ever been bullied? At what age? What did you do when you found out your kids were being bullied? How did you control your temper, and how did you help them? Were you able to help them?
Any ideas? Help me!
Bullies, little jerks or misunderstood sensitive poets?
(polls)
8 comments:
That is why I love you.
I think that you did the right thing and you will find Lily a better situation for school eventually.... it sounds to me like her "teachers" are not really seeing the problem, and of course they probably wouldn't listen to you if you tried to explain because that would mean the " people that do this for a living" were wrong and NOT doing their job. As a teacher I could tell you about every student I had, AND how they treated the people around them, and what to look for...so really it's crap that Lily was even having to deal with this.... I commend you for not knocking that little red headed girl off her chair either :-) School should be a SAFE learning environment and as a parent I would not hesitate to pull my kid until she felt safe in her environment.
Oh, where do I even begin? With love for Lil, that's where. I was picked on all through preschool, and it SUCKED, and then when I finally fought back mom got called and I got in so much trouble and I remember feeling like it was horribly unfair and I was trapped, I hated it.
Carter had a similar problem in his first grade class, only he didn't fight back, he just cried, all through class. And he started saying he had a tummy ache all the time, especially at night and just before school. That was the worst thing ever, to think of your kid so miserable in class that they just cry, and make themselves sick worrying about it. We had the same debates/discussions as you... we wanted to teach him how to deal with such things, we wanted him to be strong and stand up for himself, we didn't want to condone violence or get him into trouble, we didn't want him to think that running away was the answer, but we couldn't have him go to school like that every day. We couldn't have him learning to *hate* school. So... we talked to him the best we could and got him into a different school.
I think you did the right thing by pulling Lily out. It's all well and good to teach her how to be strong and deal with these things, but when she's in a situation where she a) can't get out of it, she can't leave or decide to place herself in a different environment b) she has in a situation where she has little to no control--between the teachers and those two little shitheads, her hands are tied. She stands up for herself, she gets in trouble. She avoids the situation (by not going to the bathroom, not changing her clothes), she gets in trouble. And everywhere she turns, she *has* to deal with those other kids. c) you can teach her by talking to her, explaining to her why you removed her from the situation, talking to her about how sometimes the best way to be strong is to go the other way, and making sure to pound in that what those other kids did was NOT OKAY. As for your temper, you can talk to her about that and how mommies sometimes lose their tempers, and it's something everyone needs to work on.
If she was older, if she had more than just those few teachers to talk to, whatever, then perhaps you'd be sheltering her... but really, overall, I think that in this kind of situation you'd still be in the right. Perhaps talking to the school counselor, getting some social skills tips, whatever, would be helpful, but think of all the kids who get bullied and then shoot up their school. The problem is that they are TRAPPED, they have no control, and they have to deal with being harassed on a daily basis. If we were at a job dealing with that, we would press charges. We could ask for a transfer. We could choose another job. We would have a lot of options that kids simply don't have. We have to be their advocates. That's not sheltering, that's simple kindness.
As for the little girl... pull her hair.
I had this issue with my daughter when she was in second grade. A boy at school yanked her pants down on the playground, and the school did NOTHING to discipline the boy. She was suddenly very afraid to go to school. In the end, she was homeschooled through the end of that year and then put into a new school the following year.
Once she began taking Jiu Jitsu classes, her self-confidence improved immensely and now she is a very happy, confident kid at school. I don't know if the martial arts training is the reason, but it definitely helps. So I would encourage you to consider that - there is much to be learned from martial arts, including self-respect, self-control, physical defense techniques, and general self confidence which comes from knowing how to take care of herself!
Good luck, I feel terrible for kids who are bullied at school, and at 4 years old! That is terrible for her and for you :(
I love this post. My son was bullied very physically at his first soccer meeting (not even practice) and he HATES soccer to this day. The kid's parents did nothing. He's also a little arrogant prick on the field, lessons he obviously learned from his dad. Ugh, I can't stand bullies and I can't stand their parents even more.
Great blog, found you on MBC!
It's always the kids with strong personalities that make easy targets. I think you did the right thing by taking Lily out of that pre-school. Sometimes it takes more courage to walk away then continue up the mountain. That school hasn't supported Lily or you and Steve as parents. Okay done with that..
Both Bridget and Tucker have encountered bullies and both handled it in different ways. One girl, who used to be one of Bridget's best-friends, started tormenting her at the end of 4th beginning of 5th grade. I tried talking to the mom, but I hate to say it, most don't realize that they're raising assholes. So of course, she didn't listen. Bridget and I just talked about how we don't know what goes on in other people's homes, and that kids act out because they're internalizing something. So ignore the bitch and realize that she's a big fish in a little pond and that you're leaving this podunk town and she'll probably get pregnant after high school anyway.
Tucker is always getting picked on because he's small and has his speech problems. Generally, he doesn't care and Bridget usually threatens anyone who talks smack about her brother, but now that she's homeschooled, he's had to find "protection" elsewhere. So he's started his own mini-mafia, by hanging out with all the "muscle" in the school. He told me how he now has a bodyguard, a few actually. Lily could always become the mafia princess and have some hired help. I'm sure Tucker could loan her a few of his bodyguards and call in a favor later. I have tried the whole touchy-feely thing that I did with Bridget, but I don't think Tucker is buying it. I did tell Tucker that it's okay to have friends around if kids are being mean, but I don't want fighting, and its best to walk away. Tucker and his friends haven't gotten into any fights, and he usually walks away if kids are being jerks.
The saddest part is no one follows the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" anymore. Really, all it says is don't be an asshole all the time. Think about someone else once in awhile. The schools should really enforce that more, as well as parents.
I don't have a kid so I can't really provide advice. What I can say in a very round of bout general way is that you are a consumer. You are paying for preschool and if the shit isn't going how YOU want it to go you have every right to throw a fucking fit. You know specifically I don't generally advocate that type of behavior but let's face it the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I will attempt to resolve issues the proper way but when people throw up road blocks due to ignorance, laziness, or lack of motivation I have no problems with freaking the fuck out. There are certain rules to freaking the fuck out and still getting things done. 1. Don't swear, 2. use big words.3. be willing to compromise. If you swear you discredit yourself, loose your audience, and give the other party reason to discontinue the conversation. Personally; however, I love profanity. Mark Twain once said that profanity provides relief denied even to prayer. Studies also show that profanity can help increase our tolerance of pain. If you use "big words" and proper English you are harder to dismiss. It is not intended to intimidate the other party simply convey that you are educated and have a firm concept of the problem. I see freaking the fuck out as a tactic. I'm not getting what I want so I loose it and ask for the moon and the other party will usually come back with something in between. Just my 2 cents.
PS I hate other people's ass hole kids, this includes my sister-in-laws daughter. It makes me nervous about raising children. I don't know what I would do if my kid was an ass hole. Is there a book "Raising your kid not to be an ass hole?"
Love you,
Wesley
Can i just say, that I am so in love with you Wes? Best advice ever! I too love profanity, but in a slight follow up to this blog, i did sort "freak the fuck out" with out using the word fuck (who's proud?!) I even cited a study about how preschool can be detrimental for children becuase other kids of preschool age do not have the proper coping mechanisms necessary to teach other respect, communication, and empathy, that this was an adults job and it was not being handled properly at this school. So we left.
And as for that book, if I am lucky enough to find that my kid isn't an asshole after all, (I will settle for jerk) I'll write it, sign it and mail you a copy, along with your cookie.
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