I know it’s normally swim day, but we’re kinda between events there and nothing new happening until after short course state meet that we are not attending. Instead, I want to take this chance to talk about something that keeps popping its ugly head especially in Zoeys life.

Zoey has the misfortune of getting my genetics. I grew up smart, with a smart mouth and caring what people thought about me. It took years of toughening up to get me to the point where I am now not caring what people say. Though I still have the smart mouth, I’ve learned how to not be awkward with it now. I have learned how to censor what I want to say versus what I should say. I grew up getting what you would say is bullied and made fun of by people. I guess it was more of the fact I was an awkward individual because my brothers did not have these same issues because their personalities were different than mine, and I see that same thing in my children. Ellie has a very don’t care what anyone says about me, I live in my own world, mentality about her. Timmy is a pull for others he is the person people want to hang out with.

Zoey is stuck in a world where she thinks her little comments and what she thinks is funny will bring people in. The sad part is it just makes people make fun of her more. Lately, in more than one case, other kids have been lying about stuff she said to other kids, making her lose that one person she thought was her friend because of a lie.

I understand her pain more than most because she got it from me. The sad part is I can’t fix it because it took me going to the Marines and getting myself true friends for me to finally realize real friends don’t care your flaws they like you and it took me realizing that just because I can say it does not mean I should. Though we are working on teaching Zoey how to interact with the world on a stronger level. I want to talk about bullying for a minute.

Bullying is an unacceptable form of interpersonal communication. I once found myself on the side of the bully, and it made me sick on the inside. It was an acting part for a college course. My professor asked me to play a bully in class for the entire semester because she needed a bully in the interpersonal communications course to teach people how to deal with a bully and I was the old man of the course and probably didn’t need the course anyways. I hated that semester so much I had to be mean and aggressive and say mean things to people that I hated me and another veteran got pulled in to be this class antagonist. I found myself hating the bully more because it showed me how shallow the thoughts and intent of a bully is.

I can tell you the thing that turns a bully off the fastest is to ignore them and act like they don’t matter or exist. A bully is looking for a reaction. If you react and respond, it means game on to a bully. I tell Zoey constantly to ignore mean girls, and they will go away.

The thing that baffles me is the grouping mentality that happens with bully’s. A bully will start making fun of someone, and other will cling onto that bully and help and laugh so they aren’t the target. Many times, you will see a girl that, in most cases, is a nice and good girl, turn mean, and bitter toward another girl just so she isn’t the one bullied. Then you have girls like Zoey that even if given a choice to gang up won’t do so.

It is a sad state of affairs that we allow bullying to go on around us. I am even guilty of it myself. I have said it the past let kids learn to be stronger but the truth is we should not allow our children to have to be in these kind of situations in places they should feel safe like a practice, a soccer field, or even church. Leave the hard skin for places we expect to need it not in places we want our children to learn and grow in.

I, for one, am going to start watching and teaching children that bullying is not a tolerated discipline in this world, and it is looked down upon. It is hard enough having to come home to find a crying daughter because some girl lied about her to another girl, and then they spent 20 minutes making fun of her. Let alone one day having to find her having ended it all out because some bully finally got to her that badly.