Bullied Kids Need Heroes
He has only come to one day of
school so far, and we are almost at the end of the first month of the year.
Phone calls to the boy's home are answered by a frazzled mother who says weakly
that her son does not want to go to school and refuses to leave the house in
the mornings. Paddy is an only child, he is overweight, does not enjoy sports,
wears glasses and has only recently moved to the area. Attending a new school
is a frightening prospect; but even worse is when it is a secondary school
where you know absolutely no-one. Paddy has not got the desire nor the
will-power to make his first week in school a part of history. Bullied in
primary school, he can only imagine that secondary school will be ten times
worse.
Today I learnt of another child,
another boy. His mother is distraught. She has already kept him back a year. He
simply refuses to go into first year: 'This morning, he came into the kitchen,
hand on throat. Still in his pyjamas at ten to nine. 'I think I have a bit of a
sore throat..' I just hadn't the heart to force him.' This boy was also bullied
severely in primary school, being unfortunate enough not to fit in to any
clique in the classroom or the year. His mum is not only upset however – she is
angry. 'I'm sick and tired of teachers just not 'seeing it'', she fumes. 'My
boy comes home, pale-faced, silent, never anything exciting to tell me about
his day. 'We monitor the corridors continually' his teachers say. But he is
bullied. It's the little things – he was picked for the school team last year,
but every match, when he was out on the pitch, never once was that ball passed
to him. And he never is asked to a friend's house at the weekend. He has no
friends.' She stops, broken-hearted. It hurts so much when it is your own child
and there seems to be nothing you can do to help.
These are only two example that I
have heard of in recent days. It would be ridiculous to think that these are
isolated instances, unique only to one part of the country, There are children
all over Ireland struggling with every new morning, every new possibility of
their worst nightmare coming true.
What can we do? The mother's
criticism of teachers is unfortunately true in many cases. Wrapped up in our
own lives, we often refuse to see the blunt reality staring at us on the
corridors and in our classrooms. We know the lonely children, wandering
aimlessly up and down the corridors at break-times, we do hear the veiled
comments and the faint sniggers of laughter and most of the time, sadly to say,
we refuse to recognize and refuse to act. Somewhere along the way the teaching
profession has lost its heart and a vocation has become simply an occupation.
Staffroom conventionalities have made the best of us afraid to speak out; pride
often makes the most alert of us unable to reach out and change an hour, a day,
a life.
And so parents need to rise up
and force change. Firstly be attuned to your child's feelings and then refuse
to send your child into a situation where they feel unloved, unwanted,
rejected. Your duty is to make sure your child feels special and needed. Speak
out about the bullying, let the world know that you will not accept the abuse
of man by fellow man. Ignore the bemused glances, the whispered words, the
blank responses. If necessary take your child out of school and educate him/her
yourself. Complaints from parents do have an effect in the staffroom and on
school management, especially if we know that the parent really does mean
business. As teachers, we badly need more
parents and guardians to let us know what is happening to their child in school
and how they feel about it. This is the only way that much-needed change will
occur.
I heard the end of the story too.
The broken-hearted mother spoke of her sister's son, now 29, living in Cork. He
lives alone in a small room and has no friends. He was bullied in school just
like her boy. He no longer lives, he just exists.
Every bullied child who
experiences their worst nightmare coming true every day needs a special hero.
Be your child's outspoken, vocal, active, determined...special hero.
