Books and Bullying

So we have had issues with bullying in public school and with “friends” in the past. This hasn’t been a huge problem lately though- Thank goodness!


I came across a book this past week. I read it in 2 days- it was that good! It is The Year of Learning Dangerously by Quinn Cummings. I didn’t agree with everything she said but I love that the author was willing to admit her own shortcomings in her own education and how she felt overwhelmed at times and doubted that she was doing the best for her child by homeschooling her. This is an issue that all homeschool parents have at some point- Am I doing what is best for my child? Anyways- one of the parts that stuck out to me (so much so that I wrote it down!) was her summary on bullying. She is talking about all the questions someone (who she refers to as the interrogator) asks when they find out you homeschool. Here is the quote that I wrote down from pg 24: “‘But,’ the Interrogator might ask, ‘how will these kids learn to deal with bullies and jerks?’ As luck would have it, there are bullies at the Scout meetings, in the mall, on the playground and even at family reunions. There are jerks everywhere you look. Children who homeschool do get to negotiate with socially toxic people. What they don’t get to do is grimly endure an entire year sitting two feet from a person who makes their lives miserable on a regular and predictable basis. It’s not unreasonable to hope that by the time homeschooled children enter the world as adults, they will have acquired the self-possession required to walk away from someone who is belittling them and been spared the recurring nightmares of being trapped in the locker room with the bully.”

This is SO true! I had tried to figure a way to sum up the answer to this question, particularly since we have experienced bullying in various place and not just the public school. I absolutely love this part: “What they don’t get to do is grimly endure an entire year sitting two feet from a person who makes their lives miserable on a regular and predictable basis.” I like that particular part because bullying is one of the reasons I pulled my 2nd son out of public school. Yes he still gets bullied occasionally by “friends” but it is not a consistent thing. He isn’t coming home from everything we do crying that no one likes him, so-so was mean to him, etc. Instead of coming off the bus every other day crying and upset I now have a child who gets upset only occasionally about another child bullying him- maybe once a quarter, instead of every day. And because of the homeschooling community that we are in if he tells me about it when it happens I know I can always make it into a teaching lesson with all the kids involved…and the parents won’t be upset that I “corrected” their child! LOL

My "Different" child

This short story reminds me of my ADHD child. I hope someone gets some hope/ encouragement from it.

My Son the Warrior

Taken from “The Rest of Us” by Jacquelyn Mitchard

“Until now, we took a fair amount of pride in the fact that we could raise boys we described as sturdy but gently. Boys who could throw straight but also liked to cuddle, and who made guns from their breakfast toast only occasionally, not every day.

Then along out of babyhood came our youngest son, now rounding the curve toward age three, and we have to admit we think this boy is an alien life form.

Martin, who has been raised exactly like his brothers have been raised, sleeps with a plastic scimitar tucked into the band of his training pants. He sidles up to the couch evenings, and with a beseeching look in his almond-shaped brown eyes, says, “Mommy, may you fight me please?” He often carries two swords (spoons will do in a pinch) for this purpose. And so I sit, desultorily whacking away in a moral combat with my toddler, who crows when he lands a direct hit, “You’re dead now, Mommy. Please fall over.”

I know that Martin loves me—after all, he must depend on me to give him food since he is too short to reach the cabinet handles. But when I hear him sing his version of his favorite song, “Ol’ McDonald had no mommy, ee-ay-ee-ay-oh….” I am unsettles. And recently, he performed a Freudian maneuver that was an even greater source of consternation.

We have a children’s wooden crèche next to our Christmas tree, and we had versions of making it work in the style that French families do—you know: The Three Kings (called the “Wise Guys” by our sons) start out a few feet away from the manager and move a little closer every day throughout Advent.

Martin took an interest in the crèche this year, and I noticed immediately that every night at bedtime, Baby Jesus was on the roof of the stable.

“Why is he up there, Marty?” I asked.

“He is hiding from his mommy,” Martin explained with his customary intensity. “She always tells him no, don’t do that. He can’t stand her.”

This, I thought, is an angry young man. And I get further evidence all the time that Martin is the toughest cookie in our jar.

The other night, I was helping him put on his pajamas—an indignity he no longer suffers gladly. Taking pity on his restless cried, I soothed him, “There, there. You’re Mom’s little puppy….”

“No!” he cried. “I’m ling of the wild frontier.”

I suppose it is difficult to be king of the wild frontier and still have someone count out the carrots on your plate. Martin’s nature brings home to me again and again the truth that our sons and daughters are only passing through. At first, they are of you, born to come to your arms. Rapidly, they are with you, pausing only long enough for you to dab a few hurried strokes of paint on the canvas they are becoming—they are on their way to belonging to themselves, and then to the world. If we are lucky, they always will consider our home their harbor, but they are headed out to the open sea, almost from the first.

I sit tonight, looking at Mother Mary, her head softly bowed as she waits inside the stable for her little son to get over his fit of pique and come down from the roof. And I think of thousands of years of mothers of growing children who bowed their heads and hoped for the best, as they wondered, What child is this?”