The Bullies and The Bullied

My oldest and my youngest child have had similar situations when transitioning to school. We're not a daycare family, we didn't overly socialize our children preferring to do things with our own family most of the time and so because of that both of them struggle in that "learning how to be in large groups of strangers experience" that is school. The nuances of friendship, the little mean games kids play, these things have baffled both of my kids. Both with the boy and now the girl, there have been tears and bewilderment over power plays, withdrawing of friendship and other shenanigans that are simply how children work out how to communicate and socialize.

There has been one little girl, however, who has stood out when it comes to stories from school. My first inclination was to write it off as "this child speaks how she's spoken to, that's sad" because she is constantly saying harsh critical things to the girl. She tells her she's doing it wrong. She tells her or insinuates she isn't doing a good job - apparently quite a lot. She belittles her and makes her cry. There was an alleged incident of hitting, but honestly it was hard to exactly sort out what happened.

I mentioned it to the teacher, that I was concerned about the meanness of some of this communication, and was she concerned? Did they not get along? The teacher assured me it's normal socialization in Kindergarten. We're friends today, we're not friends tomorrow. I don't like you anymore. Now we're best friends. Mean girling seems to start at age five, who knew? But ok, I gotta leave it to the professionals and not be THAT parent.

As a bullied child myself, I'm afraid that sometimes I DO actually look on being bullied as an opportunity to toughen up. That's bad psychology but I know it's also common in adults who were bullied as children. So I've been trying to give her language to dismiss this girl, the husband has too. We've tried very hard to diminish the importance of ANY mean words spoken at school, stressing that our real friends wouldn't speak to us this way. I've tried to focus on making her strong enough to DISREGARD these attacks, but she's five. That's a hard lesson for an adult, it's impossible for a five year old.

Today as she exited the bus, the girl in question spit into her face.

So, phone calls have been made.

I don't need anyone drawn and quartered but I've been the bigger person for quite some time about it and so has my husband and now I'm DONE. Conversations will be had. Change will occur in some form.

The worst part of it all is how today when she's telling me about she says "I really like her, why doesn't she like me?" I wanted to SCREAM "NO DON'T LIKE HER SHE'S AWFUL." But she might not be awful. I don't know this kid. All I know is the sideways conversations my child shares, full of confusion why someone would say mean things to her.

I don't know why. She's so sweet, I can't imagine anyone ever saying anything mean to her. She loves school. I won't have this experience change that.

In a dramatic case of the shoe now shifting to the other foot - I feel certain WE TOO will be getting phone calls.

After what was apparently an awesome happy day at school, Miles went batso on the bus. We struggled so LONG to get him out of his harness. "He won't get up," we said. "He's fine he's outgrown it," we promised.

Today apparently he got up and punched the bus driver. He also spit all over the windows. He was SO OFF THE CHAIN they went BACK to school, got another adult for the bus before they brought him home. The very least I can hope for out of this is a harness for the little monster. Why did he do this? JUST TO BE A JERK. That's the thing with Miles. He's smart. This is willful misbehavior on his part. He's doing it because he can. He's doing it for the same reason he taunts Charlie and makes him cry by making "the raptor noise". He can do it, it's entertaining to him to cause distress.

So now we're also the parents of the jerk. We're the reason your kid was late getting home, because of our kid. Our kid spit on the bus like a wild animal, hocking loogies all over the window.

Perfect. We're bullied and we're bullies. I guess that makes us a well rounded household. We bring balance to The Force.
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