Category: Suburban

Memoir, Princess, Suburban, Teacher

Puppies: Better than Booze

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Puppy RoomDalhousie University has just introduced a puppy room to help its students deal with the stress from Christmas exams. I’ve watched a few of the videos on-line. These stressed-out university students look like little kids.  As soon as they reach out to the dogs, their smiles and giggles become completely genuine. You can just see the tension slipping away from their backpack laden shoulders.

I know I would have been a frequent flyer at the puppy room if they had had one when I was at university. Just before I started my second year, my parents packed up our house, gave away our dog and moved 4,000 miles away. It felt surreal as I moved into an apartment downtown with my best friend. I went from being a very sheltered teenager to being a scared little college girl overnight. I was going on the world’s longest sleepover and my parents were never coming to pick me up.

We didn’t have a puppy room at my university. We did have a pub, though. And that’s how most of us dealt with stress. Trust me. There were many mornings I wished I had spent the evening at the puppy room instead of the pub. Sadly, I was not unique. University students are well known to be heavy, binge drinkers. Some of that, no doubt, is due to the excitement of having the freedom to do whatever you want without your parents looking over your shoulder. But a big part of it is because alcohol is a stress releaser. After a few drinks, you stop worrying about your assignments and your exams. You forget about your money problems and your relationship issues. Life’s a party when you’re loaded! Unfortunately, the next day, those good (albeit: fuzzy) feelings are gone, often replaced by feelings of embarrassment over last night’s actions. Once the booze wears off, the stress returns, often with a vengeance.

A dog never makes you regret patting it the night before. You could pat a dog all night long and never wake up feeling guilty or stupid or regretful. Unfortunately, we don’t all have 24-hour access to a soft, calming animal. That’s why it’s important for our children and our students to know how to deal with stress so that it motivates, rather than paralyzes them.

As an elementary teacher, I’ve tried to help my students see school as something they can enjoy, not dread. Part of my job is to help them feel comfortable with writing tests. I emphasize that tests are just one way to show what we know. We talk about how to read the directions. We practice examples. We write practice tests that look exactly like the real test, except with different questions. We have discussions about how stressing over something doesn’t make you do any better. In fact, it often makes you do worse. I also tell them that in the big story of their lives, one math test is not going to make or break them. If you bomb the test, it doesn’t mean that you will end up living like a hobo in a ditch somewhere, while all of your friends go off to be doctors and lawyers. All it means is that for some reason you didn’t get what we learned this week in this particular area. No worries. We’ll work on it. Just breathe.

To paraphrase the great philosopher, Steven Tyler, I want my students and my children to know that  “life’s a journey, not a destination.” Live in the moment. Learn from the bad times and move on. And if you have the choice between cuddling a puppy and chugging a six pack, you’re better off with the puppy every time.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/12/students-instagram-dalhousies-puppy-room-therapy-dogs.html

Rants, Suburban, Teacher

An Open Letter to Peter Speight, former South Shore Regional teacher and admitted sex offender

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Dear Peter,

I have been reading in the paper that you are trying to get reinstated as an elementary school teacher. As a woman, a fellow teacher, and the mother of two school-age children, I have a favor to ask of you.

Please. Stop. Now.

From what I understand, and correct me if I’m wrong, you were fired from your teaching job in New Germany in 2008, when you admitted to committing indecent acts. In an article in the Chronicle-Herald, you said you had gotten into a “strange habit” of masturbating in your car and then calling women over to watch. (http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/207214-ns-court-rules-teacher-guilty-of-sex-charge-must-be-rehired)

You said you never targeted children, which I’m sure was a relief to the parents of the children in your class. I also read that you were given a conditional discharge in 2009, which must have been a big relief to you. The South Shore Regional School Board fired you but you appealed that decision. An arbitrator was called in and said that you should only get a one year suspension without pay. The school board challenged that decision in court but, once again, the stars and the law were on your side and a Supreme Court judge ruled that no errors had been made in the original judgment. If I understand correctly, you are looking to get not only your job back but the money that you lost during your time off without pay? About $150,000, I read?

Now, I agree with Pierre Trudeau’s philosophy that the nation has no place in the bedrooms of Canadians. But, seriously dude, you left your bedroom, went out in your car and got busy in public. That’s not cool. And then purposely calling women over so they could see what you were “up” to? That’s less than cool, that’s against the law. And it’s nasty.

As a fellow elementary school teacher, I want you to think about what you’re asking here. Do you seriously expect parents to trust you with their children? It’s hard enough for teachers these days to earn the respect of parents without asking them to trust an admitted sex offender. I guarantee you, if you win this fight, it won’t end in the courts. When the class lists go up in September, your fight will start all over again.

As a woman, you should know that your story creeps me out. Not because you enjoyed sitting in your car, alone, pleasuring yourself. That’s icky but when you called unsuspecting women over to watch? That’s when you crossed the line into scary territory. I enjoy walking or jogging by myself during the day and I’ve always felt safe doing so. If I had been one of the women you had called over to your car to shock (?) surprise(?) scare(?) that sense of safety would be forever ruined for me. And I guess that’s my biggest issue here: we don’t know why you did it. What did you get out this? Was it a power issue? And how do we know the next time the urge hits you won’t grab the woman who comes over to your car? Just because no one was physically hurt, it seems that a legal slap on the wrist was enough. But trust me, those women who trusted you and came over to your car, no doubt thinking you needed help, are now less trusting and less secure when they are out alone. You did that.

Finally, as a mother, I know I couldn’t in good conscience send my child to your class every day and just cross my fingers that you were rehabilitated and that no other “stange habits” would pop up during the school year. I don’t know if you have children but there’s nothing more important to a parent than your child’s well being.

I am guessing that you became a teacher for the same reasons the rest of us do – you love kids and teaching and learning. And I get why you want your job back. No doubt you worked hard to get it and, by all accounts, you were good at it.

But, if you truly care about children and the teaching profession and your community, please abandon this quest to get your job back. You may have the law on your side, but it’s not right. Teach adults who can make an educated decision about whether they feel they can trust you.

Let it go, Peter. It’s time to move on.

Memoir, Pop Culture, Princess, Raves, Suburban

Dallas vs. Dukes – A Friday Night Dilemma

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dallasthe-dukes-of-hazzard

Larry Hagman died last week.  He was 81 and, by all accounts, was as nice a person as his alter-ego, J.R. Ewing, was nasty.

Coincidentally, also last week, my dad bought a new TV to replace the old one he had in his basement. Now, when I say old, I don’t mean 10 years old, I mean 1975 old! This was the very first color TV our family ever owned. We got it when I was in junior high. It only got the first 12 channels because there were only 12 buttons next to the screen. (You had to get your butt up off the couch if you wanted to change the channel.) But that was OK if you were living in New Brunswick in the 1970’s, because we only got two channels.

Every Friday night, my family (Mom, Dad, little bro, the beagle and me) would gather in our tiny family room to watch TV. We would break open the one bag of chips and the one bottle of pop. It was my mother’s job to divide the chips evenly into 4 plastic bowls – one for each of us. We couldn’t just share a bowl. That was crazy talk. And we’d each have a small glass of pop. I think we shared the same amount of pop among the four of us that I got at the movie theatre the other night for myself. (Hellooooo? people? When did we forget about portion size?)

Like I said, we only got two channels and for some reason unknown to anyone with a clue, the great programming gods of the day decided to put the two most popular shows of the time on opposite each other. So, every Friday night we had a dilemma.

Dukes or Dallas?

Usually we opted for fairness and equality. One week Dukes, one week Dallas. But remember, this was before DVRs, YouTube and even VCRs. If you missed a show, you missed it, unless somehow you were lucky enough to catch a repeat of the show months later and by then it didn’t matter. You already knew what happened.

Mom and I were already fans of Dallas, thanks to the casting of Patrick Duffy – the Man from Atlantis. (He was so cute with those little webbed feet.)

the_man_from_atlantis-show

My brother and father were big fans of the Duke boys and their crazy uncle, the evil Boss Hogg and, of course, Daisy Duke in her little jean shorts. (The dog was good either way. She was just happy to be inside, on the couch, with her peeps.)

catherine-bach-122284

(Sorry guys, no short shorts, but at least you can see the car!)

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t hate it when we had to watch D.O.H. Them Duke boys was awful cute and the show was funny, in a hillbilly sort of way. They were the original Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo family.

But I loved Dallas. I loved the theme music and the fact that everyone was so rich and beautiful. J.R. was the man you loved to hate. He said the most vile things with a smile on his face. And he was funny – wickedly funny. When J.R. was shot in Season 9, we spent months waiting and debating with the rest of the world about Who Shot J.R.?  On November 21, 1980 we gathered in our little family with our chips and pop and watched, with the 350 million other people who tuned in, to see who the culprit was. (In case you were living in a cave during that time, it was his mistress, Kristen. No wonder. He was really, really mean to her.)

Dallas started when I was 12, a dorky girl with a pageboy boy haircut, and wrapped it’s finally episode when I was 25, a married woman juggling a job, a husband and a house full of pets. Dallas was a part of my growing up.

jr ewing

“I know what I want on JR’s tombstone,” Hagman once said. “It should say: ‘Here lies upright citizen JR Ewing. This is the only deal he ever lost.'”

Rest in Peace, J.R.

_____________________________________________________________________

If you only had two channels, which would you have picked? (Remember: you’re only 12. You got nothin’ else to do.)

Dukes of Hazzard opening sequence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxD0PqVlt5Q

The best of J.R. If you were a fan of Dallas or you just like funny stuff, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZV3365a7Ew&feature=related

Pop Culture, Rants, Suburban, Teacher

A Tale of Two Buses – Fight or Flight

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Who’s driving the bus?

 Back in June of this year, Karen Huff Klein, a 68-year-old bus monitor from New   York, was caught on tape being harassed by the middle school students on her bus. These kids were vicious. They insulted her, swore at her, poked her, and threatened her.  Throughout it all, Ms. Klein sat in her seat and took the abuse. She kept her back to the kids and stoically looked out the window. When a video of the incident went viral on YouTube, a sympathetic Canadian man set up a donation fund called, Give Karen H. Klein a Vacation! People sent in money in droves to support this poor grandmotherly woman. When Karen was finally presented with her cheque it was for a whopping $700,000.

Fast forward to November. Halifax bus driver Heather Vidito is caught on tape breaking up a fight between two teenage boys. The video starts with the two boys pounding on each other in their seats, while the bus is moving. They eventually end up rolling around on top of each other in the aisle. You can hear the bus driver yelling at them to stop, along with the voices of the other kids urging them on. The bus driver handles the situation quickly and profanely. She drops the f-bomb a few times and tells one kid to move his ass to the front. The fight ends within seconds of her arrival and the bus is back on the road in less than a minute. She never touches the kids. This video also went viral and quickly caught the eye of Stock Transportation (her employer) and the school board. Within 24 hours, the bus driver was fired. The kids who were pounding on each other and cursing at the bus driver were “disciplined” according to the “code of conduct”. This usually means a maximum sentence of a 5-day vacation suspension. And these kids have the satisfaction of knowing they got their bus driver fired. That’s a lot of power for a kid who doesn’t even shave yet.

So, let’s compare.

If you let some snot nosed kids push you around and treat you like crap, you might get sympathy and affection (and in Karen’s case, a huge whack of cash.) But if you actually stick up for yourself and do your job, you could get fired.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You can’t have adults swearing willy-nilly at kids. You have to have some professional decorum. But the bus driver’s job is to keep ALL of the children on the bus safe as they travel from school to home and back again. What if one of those squabbling prepubescent monsters, or an innocent “by-sitter” got seriously hurt while the bus driver was politely asking them to stop their shenanigans and take their seats, please? Can you imagine the outcry?

On the other side of the coin, while my heart goes out to Karen Klein, I think some job training would have been in order.  As I watched the video, I wondered what her actual duties as a “bus monitor” were? If she couldn’t protect herself, how could she protect others? Was she actually keeping the other kids (the ones not acting like devil spawn) safe? The behaviour of the bullies was unacceptable, to say the least. It was outrageous and they should have to walk to school from now until they graduate…both ways…uphill…in a snowstorm.

Both of these women were in desperate need of some on-the-job training. How do you deal with kids who are fighting, belittling, cursing and swearing? Sitting quietly and taking the abuse doesn’t help anyone, while cursing and swearing at kids is unacceptable. Employers need to get on the ball here and help staff deal with these out of control kids.

Meanwhile, if I had to choose, I would rather my kids travel on a bus with someone who can stand up to bullies and, when necessary, kick some ass (figuratively speaking, of course). I would hope she could keep the f-bomb as part of her inside voice but if it happened to slip out in a moment of crisis, I might be willing to look the other way.

By all means, Stock should discipline Heather Vidito. But fire her? That’s just f-ing ridiculous.

Pop Culture, Princess, Rants, Suburban

A Real Life American Soap Opera

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Days of our Military

As the Socialites Turn

All My (General’s) Children

The Old and the Beautiful

The Young and the Breathless

The General’s Hospital

Those who know me know there is nothing I love more than a good soap opera (and no, that’s not an oxymoron). I have watched soaps since I was six years old when I would rush off the school bus so I could watch The Edge of Night with my mother. My biggest worry about going to a new school was whether I would still get home in time to see my shows. My guilty obsession continues to this day. I keep waiting for Alex Trebek to announce that he is starting a new Soap Opera Jeopardy. I would so win that thing. Move over Ken Jennings, there’s a new champ in town.

Any-hoo, that said, it appears there’s a new real-life soap that has people on the edge of their seats. Who is the shirtless FBI agent? Were military secrets really revealed during pillow talk? It even stars a set of a real live Kardashian twins! (Wait…what’s that? The Kardashians are real? How were we supposed to know that?)

Yes, Americans have a brand-new scandal to sink their teeth into and thank heavens for that. The election is over and YouTube kittens can only take us so far. And since I am an expert on all things “soap opera-ish”, I thought I would offer a brief summary of…ahem…affairs.

Former CIA director, David Petraeus, has admitted to having an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwel and for this heinous crime he has resigned his high ranking military position. According to Petraeous himself, he and Broadwell started their affair a year ago after working together for more than 6 years. Reportedly, she nicknamed him, Peaches. Nice. The man is a four-star general and she gives him a nickname you would normally bestow on a cat.

Anyway, back to my story: Paula and David conduct their covert affair in the caves of Afghanastan until David, most likely feeling badly about thinking with his heat-seeking missile instead of his superior brain, decides to break it off. He plays her Taylor Swift’s song over the phone and tells her: “We are never, ever, ever getting back together…like ever.” Paula is heart-broken and when she hears of another hussy, one Jill Kelley, moving in on her man, she starts firing off threatening anonymous e-mails. “Stay away from my boyfriend or I’ll beat you up afterschool on the playground.” (I don’t have the actual transcripts…I’m just guessing based on the maturity of the people in the situation.)

Poor sweet Jill, a kind woman who is a real live diplomat…wait…what’s that? She’s not a real diplomat? Turns out she’s a rich socialite who organizes parties for high-ranking military men even though she’s in no way connected to military. (Hmmm…that sounds like an interesting job. Where does one apply?) Jill, in fear for her life because of these 8-grader-like e-mail threats,  asks her friend at the FBI (a friend who sends her shirtless pictures of himself) to investigate.

He does and loandbehold…the affair between Paula and David is revealed! Oh no! The tears! The anger! The resignation of Big David! But wait! Suddenly the tables are turned on Jill and she too comes under scrutiny. Turns out sweet Jill has been carrying on a long-distance relationship with General John Allen, David’s successor. 20-30,000 pages worth of e-mails. Wow! General John must be one hell of typist to get all of those e-mails out and run the American army in Afghanistan. (I can barely write this blog and get dinner on the table in the same day.)

Finally, because no soap opera is complete without an evil twin, the press has uncovered an ugly divorce scandal involving Jill Kelley’s twin sister, Natalie. Turns out, according to the judge, Natalie “lacks honesty and integrity” and should not have custody of her children. Ouch! Oddly, both the generals vouched for Ms. Liar Liar Pants-on-Fire in court saying she was a good mother. I wonder what constitutes a good mother in their books?

Now, all because two people who were married to two other people, couldn’t keep their pants zipped, everyone in this story is under investigation by both the government and the media. Stay tuned for breathless updates from the poor reporters who have been pulled from more important stories to cover this debacle.

I will continue to follow the story, like most of North America, mostly because it’s in my face all the time and also because it’s so ridiculous I have to keep reading to see what will happen next. But I hope it wraps up soon. I prefer my soaps the old fashion-way – poorly written, funny without trying to be, slow-moving and, most importantly, fake.

Memoir, Pop Culture, Princess, Rants, Suburban

Pears vs. apples – Why you should never ask a woman if she’s eating for two

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 POP QUIZ!
When is it OK to ask a woman if she’s “eating for two”?
a. Never
b. When hell freezes over.
c. When you see the baby’s head crowning.
d. When she’s eating.

I have read that there are two types of bodies – pears and apples. Pear shaped women are apparently the lucky ones, despite the fact they sometimes seem oddly out of proportion. They look like “real women” – all hips and boobs and tiny waists. We are told that this is also good thing in terms of health. And of course it is. Because I am an apple shape.  Us apples carry our weight around our middles, much like pregnant women. Apple men can rub their bellies and say, “This is one nice belly. Yup, I earned this belly.” A woman does that and everyone assumes there is a child nestled in there. And god forbid if there isn’t. Then she’s just a slob. The pear shaped woman can just smile and wiggle those ample hips of hers. That doesn’t work so well for the apple woman. Shaking my ample belly doesn’t have quite the same womanly affect.

All of that said: what on earth possesses people to ask a woman of ANY age if she is pregnant? Seriously. As an elementary school teacher, I have worked with hundreds of women of child-bearing age and it has never occurred to me to ask any of them if they are “with child” or “eating for two”. Or even worse, pat their belly and say, “Congratulations!” And yet I’ve seen it happen (and had it done to me) on many an occasion. It is horrifically embarrassing for everyone involved when a mistake has been made. The poor (usually apple-shaped) woman has to smile, say no, and make some joke about having eaten too many donuts that morning. The person who has made the faux-pas, hopefully, feels mortified and starts to stammer, “Oh I’m so sorry. It must be that blouse you’re wearing…” The people within earshot immediately have something else to do that requires them to leave the premises as quickly as possible.

Here’s a fact: sometimes women have bellies that protrude. It may be their body-type, monthly bloating, a tumour, or just too much cake going in the cake hole. Or they may actually BE pregnant, but not ready to share that information with the world. Whatever the reason, your mouth should stay shut until you get the birth announcement in the mail.

So, the answer to the above question is of course: a. Never, never, never. I don’t care if you see that baby’s head hanging out from below a lady’s skirts. I don’t care if you have just come back from hell wearing a toque and a parka. Don’t ask, wait to be told. And if (god help you) you ask a woman if she’s eating for two when she’s actually eating?! I’m sorry. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Memoir, Pop Culture, Princess, Rants, Suburban

I was a pregnant angel: Why Halloween is still my least favorite holiday

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This is what I “might” have looked like if I hadn’t been forced to wear my winter coat under my costume.

Trick or treating was banned in the village where I grew up. It was sort of like that Kevin Bacon movie, “Footloose” where the town council bans dancing after some kids are killed returning home from a dance. Rumour had it that one year a little girl in our neighbourhood had been hit by a car and killed while she was out trick or treating. The community leaders met and decided that letting children go door to door to beg for candy was too dangerous and was henceforth outlawed.

Instead, all of the parents (read: moms) gathered together the week before Halloween, with their assigned treats, and stuffed large paper bags with all sorts of Halloween goodies – chips, chocolate bars, cans of pops, even the yucky stuff like candy kisses made into those bags. They filled enough bags so that every kid in the village would get one.

Then, on Halloween night, all of the kids would get dressed up in their Halloween finest and go to Rec Centre for a two-hour ‘party’. The party was the same every year. March in, sit down, listen to a speech about how much fun we were going to have. Then the musical chairs portion of the evening would be begin. We all got in small circles and marched around to the music, while the judges fluttered in and out of our groups. If they tapped you on the shoulder, it meant you had to sit down because your costume was lame and you weren’t going to win the costume contest. By the end, there was only one boy and one girl left standing – the winners of the Costume Contest! Hooray for them! Then we would play some spooky games until it was time to get our treat bags. Once we got our bags we were put out of our misery and allowed to watch a movie, while we ate as much candy as we could shove in our faces.  For some reason, the movie was always, Ed, The Talking Horse, a rather bizarre Halloween choice I always thought.

One year, in a fit of Halloween frenzy, my mother made me an angel costume. I had long blonde hair then and when my mother put the halo on my head, I felt like I WAS an angel. Unfortunately, that was also the year the community decided to combine the annual Halloween party with an outdoor skating party. Halloween night arrived and it was about -20 degrees outside.

My father insisted I wear my winter coat.

“But it will cover up my costume!” I protested.

“Well, just put your coat on under your costume.”

I figured this was better than hiding my beautiful costume, so I put my puffy coat on first and then had my mother wriggle the dress over my head. She adjusted the halo and stepped back.

“Does it look OK?” I asked.

“Now you look like a pregnant angel,” my father said, starting to laugh.

This set my younger brother off and soon they were both howling at the 10-year-old pregnant angel.

My mother fussed with my outfit and whispered, “Ignore them. You look lovely.”

I did not look lovely. I looked like an albino penguin and skated like one, too. Thanks to my brother, all of the other kids called me “the pregnant angel” within minutes of my arrival. And I didn’t win the costume contest. I think the judges thought there was something unseemly about a pregnant angel.

Eventually the ban on trick-or-treating was lifted but by then, I was too old and ‘mature’ to go door to door. It left a bad taste in my mouth…one that I have tried to get rid of for years by eating numerous tiny chocolate bars and small, air-filled bags of chips. But I still do my civic duty and hand out treats to the youngsters when they come to my door. And when I see a little girl who looks miserable because she’s been forced to cover up her costume with her coat or even worse, jam it on underneath her costume, I give her a little extra treat. Eat up honey…it takes away the bad taste.

Pop Culture, Princess, Rants, Raves, Suburban, Teacher

Sticks and Stones…Why words can hurt us

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There are a lot of things I don’t understand, like people’s love of scotch (it tastes like cleaning oil), physics, and the public fascination with US uber-conservative and lawyer, Ann Coulter. This woman is a nasty piece of work. I can only imagine that she must have suffered some terrible pain in her lifetime that has made her dead inside to the feelings of others. Recently , Ms. Coulter tweated that she approved of Governor Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the “retard” during the third presidential debate. Seriously?!

Despite on-line condemnation from everyone everywhere, including Special Olympian John Franklin Stephens, Ms. Coulter defended her choice of words a week later on the Piers Morgan show. She said she wasn’t insulting people with mental challenges; she was insulting the president. She said she chose the word “because it’s a synonym for ‘loser.’” Seriously…again?! That doesn’t make it better!!!

But she’s right. The term ‘retard’ is most often used as an insult and it’s used because it implies that the person being insulted is not smart and a loser. But the part that Ms. Coulter seems to have missed is that’s why it’s not used by polite, caring society anymore. That’s why newscasters and reporters are referring to it as the ‘r-word’; because, it dehumanizes people with mental disabilities, therefore making it OK to abuse them.

And that’s the problem with words – they can be used to dehumanize others so that we can abuse them without any fear of guilt. On a global scale, it’s what the Nazis did when they rounded up the Jews. They dehumanized them making it OK for their soldiers to torture and kill them. On a smaller scale, this is also what happens with bullying. Call a girl a “slut” and it’s a lot easier to make fun of her and victimize her. Call a boy a “gay loser” and it’s a lot easier to beat him up and say hateful things about him. These people become “things” and not human beings anymore.

This thinking goes beyond hatred and moves into contempt. It means that you consider someone worthless or inferior to you. Once you don’t care about something, you are free to be as cruel as you want without fear of guilt, empathy, compassion or sympathy. In her book, Just because it’s not wrong, doesn’t make it right, Barbara Coloroso quotes Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire on how the world was able to ignore the genocide in Rwanda. He said that with silent indifference, the international community endorsed, “the ethical and moral mistake of ranking some humans as more human as others.”

So, Ms. Coulter, when you use the ‘r-word’ and say that you only did so because, in your mind, it’s a synonym for loser, I believe you. But if your end goal was to dehumanize the president so that we would all join you in your campaign of contempt, I think you missed the boat there. The only person dehumanized by this exchange was you.

The only conclusion I can reach is that we are in desperate need of a transfusion of humanity. If we believe that all humans are human, then how are we going to prove it? We can only prove it through our actions. Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.

Memoir, Pop Culture, Rants, Suburban, Teacher

Children do not fall off turnip trucks. It’s time for parents of bullies to get their heads out of their posteriors.

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Children do not fall off turnip trucks. (I mean, I suppose literally, some do, in rural Mississippi or southern Ontario, but really, those things are freak accidents.)

Children do not come to school, empty vessels, only to be filled up by what they learn from teachers and peers.  As the old saying goes, children learn what they live. Don’t get me wrong: I know that sometimes, despite everything we do as parents, our kids will go off the rails. But then it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to get them back on track again. Sticking your head in the sand and saying, “Not my kid!” only makes things worse.

The issue of bullying has once again reared its ugly head with the recent suicide of BC teen, Amanda Todd.  This poor child, already suffering from depression, was bullied on-line, in school and out. Despite desperate interventions from her parents and her school, she still felt powerless and alone and eventually took her own life.

There is no doubt that schools have an important role to play in the prevention and treatment of bullying. Teachers and administrators see kids at work in the classrooms and at play on the school ground. And here’s a little secret: most of the time, teachers already know who the bullies are. There are a few, usually the charming kids who are good are being sly and flying under the radar, who come as a surprise but most teachers can tell within the first month of school who is being mean to whom without anyone having to come tell. And teachers deal with small acts of meanness and bullying everyday. It’s a fact of life when dealing with people in groups – kindness and nastiness will occur and hopefully the kindness will outweigh the nastiness.

The problem occurs when schools attempt to deal with the bigger issue of bullying. Bullying is not a one time thing – like two friends having an argument over what to do at recess. Bullying is when a person or group of people targets an individual repeatedly over time using aggression to humiliate or hurt their victim.

Parents are always very willing do anything they need to do once they find out that their child is the victim of bullying. But the scenario changes greatly when parents are told that their child is the bully.

“No. Not my child. My child wouldn’t do that,” they say.

 “I know it’s difficult to hear, Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” the principal tells the stone-faced parents. “But the other child said that your child has been taunting him, pushing him and stealing his lunch treats for weeks now. We have witnesses who have verified this.”

 “They’re lying. I asked my son and he said he didn’t do it and my kid doesn’t lie.”

 “Some of the witnesses are teachers and lunch monitors at the school. They said when they confronted your son he admitted it. He actually confessed everything to me and wrote a letter of apology when he was brought to the office.”

 The principal hands the parents a letter which they refuse to take.

 “I don’t care what that says,” the mother snips. “You forced him to write that. He said you bullied him into doing it.”

 “Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I know this is difficult,” the teacher begins. “But some of these incidents have been recorded on the school’s video cameras. We can show you those now.”

 “Those things can be faked!” the father sputters, turning red in the face. “I saw a thing on it on 20/20 about it last week. You people have had it out for my kid ever since he started at this school. All of his teachers suck and the other kids are mean to him. He doesn’t do anything. He’s the victim in all this.”

 At this point, the principal looks out the window and sees the child in question on the playground. She points this out to the parents and everyone in the meeting looks out the window.

 Young Billy is walking around the playground alone. Suddenly he walks over to another student who has his back to him and pushes him to the ground. The teacher on duty runs over and pulls him away just as he’s about to kick the other child.

 The principal gasps and shakes her head.

 “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she says to the parents. “So what can we do about it?”

 The parents stand up and walk towards the door.

 “This is harassment,” the mother says.

 “You’ll be hearing from our lawyer,” says the father.

 They nab their son as he’s being brought into the office and tell him that he’s coming home with them.

“Wahoo! Freedom!” he shouts.

 As he’s going out the door, the kid turns around and yells, “See ya later, suckers.” And gives everyone the finger.

 Until the parents of the bullies take their heads out of their proverbial asses, the problem won’t get better. The most schools can do is implement short term suspensions. In reality, this usually means the kid gets to stay home and play video games all day, while the parents complain that once again their kid is being punished for nothing.

I used to work for an amazing woman who believed that, “everyone who is a pain, has a pain.” Kids who are happy and content with themselves don’t bully other kids. If your kid is bullying, you have a problem. Put your ego away and deal with it. Your child, and mine, is counting on it.