WHAT Did You Call My Baby?!

Yesterday when I picked up the kids, Josie was uncharacteristically quiet. I asked what had happened, and she said that two kids in her class had been calling her 'a jerk and stuff'. I asked her why, and at first she told me she didn't know, but then it came out that one of them was laying across her desk and she didn't like it, so kept telling him to move. He and his friend then started calling her all sorts of things, apparently, and of course the teacher, who has no control over the class anyway, either didn't hear or didn't bother to do anything because there were more pressing problems going on.

A minute later, though, she said, 'oh, and now I know how you felt when the kids at school called you fat, because they called me that, too.'

If you happened to hear an ear-splitting rending of the earth into two pieces, that would have been my internal reaction to her telling me that. My entire, horrible, ostracized childhood came flooding back, complete with little Erik Anderson talking incessantly about my 'excess blubber fat' and having things occasionally thrown at me. Even writing this, I am mentally curled into a little ball in the dusty corner of my mind, rocking. My baby, my baby can't go through this.....

Of course, outwardly, I was all cool and calm, and asked her how she was feeling, and she said fine, so I asked her whether she felt any of the things they said were true, like was she a jerk or polka-dotted or fat or pin-striped (I added those last things in to make her laugh, obviously the little sh*ts urchins didn't actually call her those things), and she said that she didn't. She told me that she had tried to ignore them, but it didn't work, and she didn't go to her teacher. I told her that if she still had trouble, and wanted to go to her teacher, then she should go, because she deserves help and attention just as much as the brats children who get it all the time by being naughty.

As I was saying this, I was thinking about all the ridiculous things that adults used to say to me when I complained about being teased. They were things like, just ignore them (which will work for the occasional tease but not for the incessant badgering I received on a daily basis), or my personal favorite, he's only doing that to get your attention because he has a crush on you. Yes, I'm SURE little Erik had a thing for me, which is why he and his friends ridiculed me up and down the halls of my elementary school for five straight years. That makes PERFECT sense. However, I also began to understand why they said those things to me. I was hurting, and really, there was nothing they could do to make me feel better, so they told me lies. What I don't understand is how they ever thought that I would buy these lies coming out of their mouths. I mean, really. How stupid did they think I was?

In addition, I understood the value of these lies to the liar, because they prevent you from saying the things that are REALLY on your mind, like 'I'm gonna kill that little f*cker next time I come in there!!!!, or 'just wait until HIS turn for one-one-one reading comes around'. Because, of course what I WANT to do is stuff an entire bar of soap into their mouths. In reality, there's not a lot I can do other than coach her in ways to react, and ways NOT to react. This is harder than it used to be, because schools seem to favor bullies so heavily. I know that sounds strange, especially with the whole anti-bullying campaign thing going on in the country now, but it's true. I can't count the number of times that I've heard parents tell me that the bullying situation in their classroom was 'resolved' by the principal calling both students into the office and having the bully apologize for 'accidentally' pushing the other child. Also, I've heard a lot of stories from parents whose children finally either pushed back or yelled something at their teaser, only to be punished themselves because the bully, being more practiced at the art of not getting caught, hadn't been seen, while the pick-ee was the one who got noticed reacting.

What I finally came up with to suggest to her to say was, no matter what he says to her, is 'I'm fine as long as I'm nothing like you.' That's not a typical insult, it has no 'bad' words, and, being an unusual thing to say, will probably at least get their attention. It was all I could come up with on the fly. We've dealt with bullying before, in another school, but that boy really DID have a thing for Josie, and was pushing her to get attention, in addition to calling the house wanting to talk to her, etc. The teachers wouldn't really help her, because they kept passing the buck as to who should deal with it - the recess teacher said that it was a classroom problem, the classroom teacher said if it didn't happen in the classroom she didn't want to hear about it, etc. In the meantime, Josie was coming home with bruises and scrapes from being shoved to the ground! That time, I had her yell out 'Here's Brian again!!! I guess he's still in LOVE with me!' whenever he came near her at recess. It worked like a charm - he was embarrassed, and left her alone after that. (This was the school I pulled her out of to homeschool for the rest of the year, BTW.)

This situation is more tricky. I'm hoping it was a one-time thing, but in that classroom, you really just can't tell. I probably will be spending some time with the offending boys when I volunteer, and if it continues, and Josie is OK with it, I will make it plain that I have their parents' phone numbers in the school directory, and I will be calling if I hear about this again, in the hopes that the threat to call their parents would stop them. Honestly, I'm not sure actually calling their parents would help, but the idea that I would do it might. Any thoughts?