Is
it too embarrassing to admit I’ve read Dear Abby, Ann Landers and a host of
imitators (but props to Carolyn Hax, who pretty much calls them like she sees
them) for decades and will probably only desist when newsprint ceases to arrive
on my lawn? Oh, well, too late.
In
a recent column, a mother who said she had been bullied as a child because she
had low self-esteem wondered how to protect her own children from the same
fate. Abby opined that instilling strong self-esteem prevents bullying.
Nonsense.
Self-esteem is more like a bulletproof vest; it can definitely shield
you from permanent damage, allow you to get through the assaults of
adolescence, and definitely bounce back more quickly, but it won’t keep life
(or bullying) from hurting – a lot.
Our
daughter was bullied throughout sixth grade; it was a miserable year for her,
despite the fact we had, from infancy, made a mindful and determined effort to instill a
positive self-image, to the point that we occasionally wondered if you can go overboard in making
your kid feel too good
about herself/himself/themself. Then middle school hits (in some cases, though not hers,
literally) and you come to realize you can't create a shield too thick for that
miserable period of life.
During
my year of penance as a middle school guidance counselor at Hancock, I used to
tell kids, “You know, you’re supposed to be miserable, right? No sane adult
would EVER go back to their middle school years. I'd be thin and have hair,
could avoid lots of mistakes. I still wouldn’t go back.” (Okay, I used the same
line with the high schoolers, too.) Most of the kids seemed to get it.
To
be honest, once I made my escape from 7th grade, more or less intact, my own experience in
those years wasn’t bad, at least in terms of relations with my peers, but we
hadn’t invented self-esteem yet, and bullies only counted if they physically
damaged you. We were mostly just expected to suck it up and move on. Actually, in high school at ISOB (International School of Brussels), we played an affluent white-kids version of the dozens, almost as a hobby. I held my own; good training for classroom teaching.
I
do understand the need to protect kids from bullies and intimidators, from
meanness. I also recognize that social media has become a dangerous game
changer. Schools do share responsibility for, at a minimum, making their environs a
safe place for all kids, even the ones who don’t quite fit the prevailing social norms. However, I also worry that we’re now overprotecting kids to the point of robbing them, in a sense, of the ability to
develop the toughness and coping skills that will allow them to compete in an
increasingly cold adult world, one that features bullying as the primary campaign tactic of a former president (and may he remain thus; if bullying is a despicable toxic trait for middle schools, how much more despicable for an allegedly grown senior citizen).
To that point, you
may have noticed all bullies don’t magically disappear after middle school. Some evolve. Most of us have had bosses who were bullies, colleagues who were
bullies. Sadly, some have suffered from bullying spouses; I
hope you have, at least, divested yourself of “friends” who were bullies. The
point is (finally,
you gasp) that the strategies we need to deal with this kind of person develop
through experience. We can’t depend on our parents, the school, or the HR
department to protect us all the time, at least from the name calling and petty tyrannies that
are the weapons of choice for bullies.
Like
most things, I don’t have complete, or perhaps even partial, answers. Another
of the “joys” of aging (at least for me) is the growth of questions and the
dearth of answers. Still, for parents, grandparents, and others who care, it’s a
question worth pondering.
No comments:
Post a Comment