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20th October
Oct. 20th, 2010 03:49 pmToday is my brother's birthday. My moderately extroverted, diagnosed-just-before-teens autism-spectrum brother. Who has always been big for his age--there's a record of a midwife exclaiming 'Oh my god we're delivering a toddler' during his birth.
I was picked on for three years during grade school for failure to fit into an established pecking order (I joined a group of kids who'd been together since preschool in grade 4, having come out of a largely unstructured Montessori school. It didn't go well).
My brother . . I don't even know. I don't think he was bullied much during the elementary years, by the sheer power of our parents vetting his teachers every year to make sure they presented enough authority for him to be okay in their space.
(No, we didn't know he was spectrum then. But when a big toddler is winning the dominance fight with a Montessori teacher, it's time to take that kid out of a Montessori setting and give him some damn structure. Which worked so well our parents really did fight the school districts to make sure they could observe classrooms before their son was in them.)
I know that by high school he was being picked on, at least a bit, and was definitely being taken advantage of: there was more than one party at our parents' house when they were out of the country. I don't know how much he noticed, or if it bothered him. He's still friendly with people from his high school.
I own no purple.
The idea, I think, is good, but wearing mourning once a year for the children we've lost won't save more. Even if there's over a million people doing it. There are millions more who have no idea, or don't care, or are maybe even threatened by it. We're that kind of ape.
I think we can do better.
Let's change the culture that says 'oh, it's just kids being kids'. It's not. It's training that says 'It is okay to hurt people who aren't like me. It is okay to hate people who are out of the closet/brown/white/fat/thin/look like they're not as miserable as me/rich/poor/smell funny/ten thousand other things that boil down to "not me". No one will stop me.'
It's going to be a lot of work. It's going to suck. Schools will need to spend time and money and training--including colleges for teachers and administrators. Parents will need to learn how to fight the school, how to fight other parents, how to fight themselves. Because parents have been bullies and bullied, too.
And this shit leaves scars.
But the words 'bullied relentlessly for two years' need to stop appearing in kids' obituaries.
Wear the purple. Speak the words. Donate to support groups--and if anyone can tell me where to give money to train teachers not to let this go, please, please do.
If you'd like to link this post elsewhere, please do.
I was picked on for three years during grade school for failure to fit into an established pecking order (I joined a group of kids who'd been together since preschool in grade 4, having come out of a largely unstructured Montessori school. It didn't go well).
My brother . . I don't even know. I don't think he was bullied much during the elementary years, by the sheer power of our parents vetting his teachers every year to make sure they presented enough authority for him to be okay in their space.
(No, we didn't know he was spectrum then. But when a big toddler is winning the dominance fight with a Montessori teacher, it's time to take that kid out of a Montessori setting and give him some damn structure. Which worked so well our parents really did fight the school districts to make sure they could observe classrooms before their son was in them.)
I know that by high school he was being picked on, at least a bit, and was definitely being taken advantage of: there was more than one party at our parents' house when they were out of the country. I don't know how much he noticed, or if it bothered him. He's still friendly with people from his high school.
I own no purple.
The idea, I think, is good, but wearing mourning once a year for the children we've lost won't save more. Even if there's over a million people doing it. There are millions more who have no idea, or don't care, or are maybe even threatened by it. We're that kind of ape.
I think we can do better.
Let's change the culture that says 'oh, it's just kids being kids'. It's not. It's training that says 'It is okay to hurt people who aren't like me. It is okay to hate people who are out of the closet/brown/white/fat/thin/look like they're not as miserable as me/rich/poor/smell funny/ten thousand other things that boil down to "not me". No one will stop me.'
It's going to be a lot of work. It's going to suck. Schools will need to spend time and money and training--including colleges for teachers and administrators. Parents will need to learn how to fight the school, how to fight other parents, how to fight themselves. Because parents have been bullies and bullied, too.
And this shit leaves scars.
But the words 'bullied relentlessly for two years' need to stop appearing in kids' obituaries.
Wear the purple. Speak the words. Donate to support groups--and if anyone can tell me where to give money to train teachers not to let this go, please, please do.
If you'd like to link this post elsewhere, please do.
