Ghosts of Columbine

When Polimom was a girl in school, there were kids who were viciously mean – so cruel that I can still remember their names 35 years later. Girls who teased.. laughed at… ignored… Yet Polimom is not blogging this from prison. Unlike the warped perpetrators of Columbine, I did not shoot those vile little tormentors.
It’s funny how many people I’ve met who have identical stories – who remember the name of the one kid (or four) who made them miserable in school. Yet Polimom did not hear their tales through bars.
What has happened to our society in the last ten years? Have children changed?
Polimom thinks they have – but it’s not the teasers that are different. It’s the victims – those social outcasts and misfits who are retaliating against their tormentors with kill lists, bomb construction, and guns.
Educators, sociologists, and psychologists have been trying to understand this phenomenon so they can stop the cycle, and their solutions are centering up on a “culture of bullying”. The Houston Independent School District (HISD), for instance, is implementing a pilot program in four schools in hopes of heading off a local Columbine.

To curb bullying, a $213,000 criminal justice grant is being used to fund the Olweus Bully Prevention Program being tested in four Houston Independent School District campuses. It is a multipronged approach that includes a survey to assess the extent of the problem, awareness training for teachers and students, counseling and disciplinary consequences for those who bully.
The key is training everyone on a campus to recognize bullying, which ranges from verbal abuse at the lunch table or in a text message to physically harming or shunning another student, said Rebecca Killern, spokeswoman for Depelchin Children’s Center, which provides counselors to HISD.

Do they really think that making sure every little girl is invited to a slumber party or every little boy is included in team activities will somehow circumvent the combustion of a social failure into a killer?
From Kidshealth.com:

Also, despite the common notion that bullying is a problem mostly among boys, both boys and girls bully. But boys and girls can vary in the ways they bully. Girls tend to inflict pain on a psychological level. For example, they might ostracize victims by freezing them out of the lunchroom seating arrangements, ignoring them on the playground, or shunning them when slumber party invitations are handed out.

Folks, I am absolutely here to tell you that the description of girls’ behavior above is bang on – but it is not bullying. It is normal. In the same way we’ve reacted to sex offenders with overly broad legislation, Polimom thinks we’ve cast the net far too widely.
Yes, there is bullying. There are behaviors and words that are not acceptable and must not be tolerated. Things like racism, or physical violence are wrong. These are different, though, from the normal socialization of children – a heirarchical sorting system that is part of the personality-formation process. That is not the problem, and if schools try to micro-manage every social interaction for the children in their care, we are going to produce even more malformed personalities.
Columbine was terrible, and it was indeed a wake-up call – but we have only partly awakened. In our need to “understand” so that we can protect our children, we’ve created an excuse for the behavior… and while we’re not saying “It’s okay to mow down your tormentors, Johnny”, we’re saying “Johnny mowed down his tormentors because they were mean to him. Poor Johnny.”
It’s not totally unlike blaming the woman for the rape.
Polimom thinks the failure to teach personal responsibility is underlying a lot of the problem. AC has been both a victim and a perpetrator of teasing, and both of these concern me as a parent. In the wake of Coumbine, however, teaching her to deflect – to not internalize the pain – has become a priority. We’ve spent many a “go to bed” practicing ways for her to deflect insults and hurtful words. We role play, and Polimom takes turns with AC, both giving and receiving taunts.
Children who are teased must be taught how to deal with it, and it is the parents who must teach this. Teach your children acceptable ways to vent their anger. Can Susie write well? Have her journal about her pain. Does Johnny like a sport? Show him the value of physical exertion. But above all else, teach them that words are not crimes, and reacting to them with violence is wrong. (From the first citation above:)

Michael Dorn, of Macon, Ga., who secretly armed himself after being tormented by schoolmates, authored a popular book, Weakfish — Bullying through the Eyes of a Child, to show the serious consequences of bullying.
“We need to make our kids understand what they should and should not tolerate,” he said.

He’s right. We do. But we cannot redefine the human development process.
The Columbine atrocity – and many similar incidents – weigh upon us all, and the ghosts of the children haunt us. But we can’t let our love and anguish for those souls blind us to our own responsibilities.
Why are you reading this from home right now, rather than from a prison cell? Whatever worked for you, Mom and Dad, teach it. It’s part of your job.