Bullying
BAGGAGE: First Chapter of my Memoir Posted on Patreon
I just posted my first chapter, BAGGAGE, on Patreon. In this piece, I write about early childhood trauma that confused me and made me…
Shecky the Meckyl and His Technicolor Groove: My Seussian Self-Help Book
I wrote this poem three years ago when my son was going through a rough patch socially….
One Way to Start the Day
This is the saddest video I have ever seen by the bravest kid I have never met. I cannot stop weeping. …
Whoa, What Are You Doing?
After my post went up at I Survived The Mean Girls, I learned that Anderson Cooper had run a television special devoted to bullying awareness and prevention called “Bullying: It Stops Here.” I just learned that the program will re-air on Friday, October 14. …
I'm Confessing My Sins Today
It is hard to admit this, but I wasn’t always the nicest girl.
At one time in my life, I cared a lot about being popular. I cared so much that sometimes I ridiculed and teased other people. Or I stood by silently while others were teased. And I did nothing. These are the things about which I am now deeply ashamed. Sins for which I have tried to atone. Today, I’m telling it straight. It isn’t always pretty….
Lessons on an Elevator
On my last hour on campus during the fall-winter 2010 semester, during my last elevator ride down from the English/Philosophy Department, I experienced the most interesting confrontation/ conversation. Ever….
Lessons From A Boy In a Skirt
Several years back, on the first day of the semester, a student walked into my classroom. A boy, clearly, a male — wearing a long pink skirt, his hair tied in a low pony-tail. When I read the roster and got to his name, he corrected me and told me that his name was Sophia.
I quickly noted the change.
When I met Sophia, she wanted gender reassignment surgery. She wished for it, but knew it would be a long road. As gender reassignment is an irreversible procedure, two letters of therapy clearance would be required. She explained one therapist (psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, sexologist) would be required to have a doctoral degree, and one of the two therapists would have to know her for an extended period of time. When I met Sophia, she was simply trying to change the name on her birth certificate and running into all kinds of roadblocks. A ward of the State from age 15, Sophia was living with distant relatives. She had no car, was taking the bus to campus, and had no expendable money for one therapist, let alone two with the kind of credentials that she would need to put her on the path towards gender reassignment….
Are You Proud of Your Sweet Little Bully?
In the all the bullying literature that is out there, there is one piece of the puzzle that hasn’t been particularly well documented, and so I’m putting out there. Guess what? Sometimes parents of bullies are proud that their children are bullies. I have heard parents admit they would rather have their children be the ones “standing up for themselves” than the ones being bullied: that they have actually encouraged their children to get physical first, so that they are never made targets themselves. For me, this is the ugliest, darkest side to parenting….
Bullying: Please Don't Post This
Yesterday, I posted a blog entry about bullying and received a few responses, but many more people privately emailed me with messages that said, “Please don’t post this, but we are having a huge problem with bullying…” or “Please don’t post this. My daughter is a terrible bully and I don’t know what to do about it…” or “I wish I could tell my kid to just punch her bully in the face… Please don’t post this”….
Growing Up Is Hard & Bullies Just Stink
For kids, I imagine sometimes life must seem more like the reality-show Survivor where there are alliances that change daily. There are secret merges. One day you are in, and the next you are on exile island, alone. Or just voted out – excommunicated, without explanation. Blindsided. My son has been negotiating these waters for a few years now. He knows he has friends; it’s just that most of them don’t currently attend his school.
Last year, when he found himself on the ground at recess, getting kicked in the nuts, he noted later, it wasn’t the being kicked hurt so much (although it did hurt) but that a person he’d thought was his friend for many years stood by and watched it happen. That betrayal hurt him much more. He felt – and still feels – that if that friend had intervened with a “Quit it,” or a “Leave him alone,” that somehow it wouldn’t have been so bad because he would have known he had that one person. That one friend….