If you haven’t seen To This Day yet, go click on the link and come back. It’s a profound piece of communication that’s generating a lot of buzz in the various social media channels.
Although it purports to be about bullying, it’s more accurately about the garden variety cruelty that children regularly inflict on each other in the darwinian petri dish known as “school.”
I have very vivid memories of being on the receiving end of that sort of abuse. While the acute effects of that abuse were easily and immediately identified, the long-term toll taken on my quality of life has been much harder to quantify.
Evie’s presence has shed some new light on this. By nearly everyone’s account, Evie is a very happy baby. She smiles easily and enjoys being held by everyone who wants to, so far anyway. Even at this stage of her development (She’s 4 months old today!) she exhibits an open, trusting nature that is wonderfully endearing.
In that, she’s a lot like me. At least the me I was before school was visited upon me.
People in a position to know have remarked upon it, even to the point of wondering what happened to me. I, on the other hand, know precisely what happened.
The question is: “How do we keep this from happening to Evie?”
You may ask, “Why do you assume that Evie will be bullied?” It is my belief that—while nothing is absolutely black and white—there are, by and large, two types of kids: the teasers and the tease-ees, the bullies and the bullied. Being bullied sucks. Believe me, I know. But bullies grow up to be, at best, douchebags. (What’s the female equivalent of a d-bag? A douchette?) For Evie’s sake, I’d like to keep her from becoming either.
I can’t protect her from every instance of teasing or bullying, I just don’t want the experience to define her life as it has mine. The process of self-actualization for me has included much work on dealing with the negative self-image I developed in my preteen and teen years when the teasing was at it’s worst. It remains a work in progress.
Then again, it doesn’t have to be this way. Life doesn’t have to be this hard.
So, how to keep the wolves at bay. That’s the quandary that occupies a lot of bandwidth in mine and Baby Momma’s (Any suggestions on a new pseudonym for her, anyone?) cranial processors lately.
What say you? Please drop us a line the comments.