Bullies

Wow, this week has been hard. Life things are happening that cannot be discussed, but the thing that has been overriding my life is the horror that happens every single day at my job.


I work with a young boy. He is 5 years old and has compulsive issues. He can't really control his impulses and does not understand everything that happens around him because he can't process things at the same speed as the other children. He has some sensory processing disorder and some hyperactivity.


Because of his processing issues and his impulse issues, he has been labeled (by the children, not the adults) as 'mean', 'dumb', and 'stupid'. 


I want to reiterate that these are 5 year olds. When they started the school year most of them were 4. 


Where the heck are they learning this stuff?


The child I work with gets bullied each and every day of school. As I have worked with him through the past few weeks (and before that, watching him when I was at the same school working with a different child) I have literally watched him change his actions. He is not happy when he comes to school. He does not want to be part of the group things because, inevitably, someone makes fun of him or assumes he is being mean when he isn't trying to be. He is consistently playing by himself.


He cries at least 5 times a day.


School lasts 4 hours.


In particular, there is one other kid who just will not leave him alone. He punches him when he walks by. He calls him names and spits at him. He kicks him, he takes his toys, he truly makes this kids life miserable.


The problem is that the school can address it, but the school cannot make decisions for the child. The school can make the child take a break. The school can talk to him about kind words and mean words. The school can teach him to be safe and to keep other children safe. The school can physically remove the child from the situation when he is being harmful.


But the school can't make or force the child to stop saying things or being physically harmful. Let's face it - teachers cannot follow this bully around every second of the day. He is sneaky. Really sneaky. 


The saddest part about the bully is that his life has been upended. His parents are getting divorced, his dad moved far away, his mom is working nights to pay the bills...and he is dealing with his frustration and anger by being mean at school.


He wasn't a bully before his family trauma started happening. 


I remember the bullies from school. I still flinch when I think of them. While I was never explicitly picked on for anything really, I did have glasses. I had braces. I was never skinny. I never wore tons of make-up. I did not enjoy the popular sports or even enjoy hanging out with the popular crowd. I do know, though, that there were bullies. I remember things they said to me throughout my school career.


In a small town, everybody knows everybody. And you're stuck with the same bullies for your entire school career. Some of them change and some of them don't.


I guess I don't really have a point. The only point I do have is that bullies are real and the school I am working at is doing everything within their power to stop this. But the kids are 5 years old. You can't kick them out of school. You can talk to the parents, but this poor mother already has enough tragedy on her plate.


How do kids know to act like this at 5 years old? Where are they learning these words? Is physical violence innate? Why are some kids targeted? 


The mind spins. Dealing with this is just so, so painful. It brings up a lot of personal issues for me. People make a lot of judgments about other people. We decide that we know 'why' someone is fat or skinny. We decided that if only they would do 'x, y, and z' everything would be better. We decide that we know 'why' people act the way they do.


The truth is, we never really know. 


This bully acts the way he does because his life is filled with trauma.


The child I work with acts the way he does because his mother was 15 when she was pregnant with him and she did not have any adults in her life to help her have a healthy pregnancy. She was on her own and she did things while pregnant that were completely unsafe. She feels awful, as a 21 year old woman who knows better now, but she cannot change the past.


We never really know, do we? It makes you think about those snap judgments you make about someone being fat, skinny, ugly, homely, mean, kind, shy, etc. You might be right. But it also is probably true that you don't know the whole story.