Thanks for sharing your story.. I do ope that Bullies would be stopped!
More Power to your blog!

Bullying is indeed very much alive in all schools today. We need to empower our children how to address this problem, and not for them to just live with it. There are many ways and techniques we can teach our kids on how to handle bullies without resorting to violent means.

I think most kids these days think that hitting a bully back is the RIGHT thing to do since they see it being done in a lot of movies and TV shows.

I think it’s time to educate students, teachers, parents, and schools alike about this often neglected problem. Coming from a traditional school myself, school authorities only start addressing the problem when a kid tells or rather “squeals” that he/she is being bullied. Again, the vicious cycle continues: the bullies, and sometimes even the whole class, will ostracize and in some cases, beat up the squealer. As a result, no one will inform school authorities anymore since they are afraid to be branded or to get hurt.

Who do you think can share and teach anti-bullying technology to our schools, students, and parents here in our country?

Thanks and more success to your blog,

School Watcher

http://schoolwatchphilippines.com

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Now, after all these years, I believe that bullying is a grown-up problem: (1) because children should not be left unsupervised and (2)because they have the power to stop the bullying when it occurs in their presence. Children are cannot be expected to behave in a socially mature manner, so it is up to us grownups to enforce civility on them in a consistent, reasonable and non-violent manner.

His first incident of being bullied was in Gr. 1, in a nontraditional Caloocan City school, by a resentful teacher whose faulty English and spelling (e.g, “Reading and Poenics” and “She don’t like that.”) was corrected by my son (who used to be so confident and outspoken then, as most kids fresh out of preschool are). She constantly broke my son’s self-esteem by humiliating him, by making fun of his mistakes in front of the class, and through subtle snide comments (”Don’t use the glue! I’ll put the glue for you because your work always looks dirty because you put too much glue.”). My sister happened to visit the school one time and saw his class during recess time: his classmates and teacher were eating in one corner as my son was eating alone in the middle of the room.

Although the administrator acknowledged her teacher’s lapses, she was too defensive of her school’s reputation to admit that she had this teacher who was ignorant and impatient with children, and incompetent enough to be considered unfit to teach young children. (I read somewhere that the teacher had just passed the Elementary LET later that year.) The administrator confessed to being busy with her graduate studies at the time that she couldn’t find the time to look for a replacement in the middle of the school year.

I transferred him to another non-traditional school in QC but was again bullied by classmates who happened to be special children. It became so bad that one night he confessed that he wanted to kill himself for being worthless and for being picked on. My heart was torn to shreds.

For this, I blame the school admin for not assigning after-class yard / cafeteria supervisors to look after children waiting for their fetchers.

The teachers and the school administration insisted that the problem lies with my son who they say has to learn to fight back, for only then can he be empowered. Although they do have a point (”there’s a bully lurking in any school you take him”), I believe that, for a school that had a system as intricate as mainstreaming, they were sorely lacking in personnel to supervise the children.

I transferred him to 2 more schools after that: a school in Greenhills where we were weeded out as a family for not being rich and materialistic enough (heck, I felt bullied by the admin there: my son flunked in Filipino, and they were forcing me to enroll my son in their P10,000-summer classes in English, Math and Science or else he would be refused re-admission.); and finally, a Catholic school in QC where he remains to this day.

Through the years, he has seen a developmental pediatrician, a child development specialist and has undergone play therapy at the Ateneo Wellness Center. All were very helpful in providing support for my son and for me as well.

Right now, he’s 16 years old and in high school. He’s doing fine, although he’s still a loner, minds only his own business (read: unconcerned), still gets bullied (even more so now), and still refuses to fight back physically. But there’s a difference: now he perceives himself to be empowered because his self-confidence has grown. His teachers keep openly expressing how my son is the most helpful, the most kind-hearted in class. Along with the other kids in the Student Council, his teachers stand by him whenever he complains that other kids pick on him. That, and maybe because he developed into a tall, dark and handsome young man, complete with his modest share of female admirers (including his mother, hehe!)

Looking back, I realize grown-ups take children’s fights more seriously as they mature. When he was small, he’d get into fights and teachers would belittle it as petty kiddie fights; now he’s as big as his dad and would still get picked on by other kids (who are not necessarily bigger or as big as he is), teachers would take it more seriously just because the warring parties are all physically bigger and more likely to inflict serious injury.

Teachers, school bus personnel, school janitors and cafeteria workers should be oriented by school administration with the view that “kiddie fights” also have a potential for critical injury and should be taken seriously.

My younger son studies in La Salle Greenhills where the PTA is a staunch advocate of “ZERO-TOLERANCE TO BULLYING”. They have posters all over the school reminding kids what specific acts constitute bullying and that the school will not tolerate bullies. Child development specialists are also invited to speak to parents about the issue. Although there still are incidents, I think LSGH is doing an excellent job for a school with that many students. So far, the bullying incidents there involving my younger son have been resolved immediately and satisfactorily, always ending with my son receiving basic courtesy, if not the friendship, of his former tormentors. It made me regret not taking my elder son to study there.

Sorry for blogging on your blog. I just wanted to share in the hope that our story would be of help to someone out there who is going through what we have been through.

I went to the same grade school as well, two or three years her senior. I was in grade 6 then.

I remembered the bitches telling me to use Block and White because I’m too negra for them. They also treated me like a dreaded disease. It seemed that no one wanted to be friends with me. I had no choice but to be friends with other people who I never thought I’ll be friends with. Good thing they turned out to be the nicest people I’ve ever encountered in my young life back then.

I am happy that Lauren has a mother like you whom she can tell anything about. I was too afraid to tell it to my family that I was being bullied. I decided to keep quiet. I still remember up to now that every night I cried and prayed to God to please give me better classmates next year.

Good thing that was only a year, and had better friends in grade 7. I tried transferring to another school when I was in grade school for high school all by myself to UPIS, but on the day of the exam, my mom never let me out of her sight. Hence, I was not able to take the exam, and had to endure that school until the end of high school.

But then again, I learned a lot about that experience. Among other things, that experience made me realize that I don’t want any of my children to be a part of an all-girls or all-boys school EVER. It’s very traumatizing.

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Thanks for all the posts guys. I truly appreciate it.

I learned there’s a talk on Who’s To Blame for your Child’s Failure tomorrow that will be facilitated by Reedley’s Principal. They’re also discussing the school’s programs.

I got to know about it by clicking on the Who’s to Blame button on Noemi’s site.:)

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Looking back, I can say that my childhood experiences molded me into who I am now - a stronger person nevertheless. =) What’s sad though is the fact that I don’t think all parents are aware of the bullying their kids might be experiencing in school. I envy Lauren because she was able to tell you about her “terrable days” in school. My mom was clueless and still is clueless of how I spent my elementary and high school days. I guess parents, especially mothers, must be more active in really knowing how their kids are doing in school and encourage their kids to speak up (especially those who are really shy like I used to be). Their kids might be being bullied already without them knowing it.

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The bullying was actually, to a certain extent, tolerated by the teachers and administration and I can even remember a particular incident with our headmaster. A girl was visiting for the day (potential transfer student) and he asked what we thought. We made disparaging comments and instead of scolding us, he agreed with our comments that she, “wasn’t very pretty”. I shudder to think about this now.

As karma would have it, I went to a public high school and was then on the flip side of bullying for freshman year. (I am white and was constantly having issues with other girls who felt I should, “hang out with my own kind”).

I think no matter what, at some point we have all been on the receiving end of a bully or someone with bullying tactics. It scares me so much now, with the internet, to see how far some people can take it. What used to be a nasty note passed around the classroom, has turned into myspace/facebook groups created just to make fun of someone. It is encouraging to hear that parents and schools are taking a more active involvement in bullying.

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