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February 15, 2012 at 6:21 pm #12676
I think there’s a clear difference, at 6 anyway, between teasing and abuse. Just my opinion. Plus, she’s up-in-arms about women being belittled and disrespected? She’s got a post titled “How to Train Your Husband.” That’s sounds pretty belittling to me. He’s a husband. Not a puppy. You don’t get to demand respect and then treat someone else like shit. Respect works both ways, thanks.
February 15, 2012 at 6:25 pm #12678What jumped out to me the most is every time someone was mean to me when I was a kid, my mother told me without fail that in no way was it a reflection on me. If a boy had upset me, well, he secretly liked me. If a girl had upset me, it was because she was jealous. So if a girl was mean to me, while it didn’t exactly boost my self-esteem it didn’t destroy me. If a boy was mean to me… I usually ended up getting a little crush on him. Because he had the excellent taste to throw tiny pieces of wadded up paper at me during class. And it was kind of a rude awakening for me to realize that not only is this not always true, it’s usually not. That when you’re older, that guy is being a jackass because he’s kind of a jackass. But I didn’t really believe this until I was eighteen and I threw myself at a guy I liked, who was kind of a dick, and was summarily rejected. (Which burned, but at the same time I wanted him more, because obviously he wasn’t just after sex! But I digress…) That’s when I got over my jackass phase, when the nice guys stopped finishing last with me, when I started ignoring Blaine and going for Ducky (only I still really have this thing for accents?).
Was the writer of the article a little overboard with the amount of vitriol? Maybe. But I’ve never had my child’s teacher just laugh off something that I view as serious. As Sarah Palin says… I don’t know. Something about mama grizzlies.
(OH! Speaking about teachers not stepping in when they probably should, anybody see this piece? You will need Kleenex, and then be prepared to feel the urge to write a strongly worded letter. I’m not joking about the Kleenex: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202)
February 15, 2012 at 6:29 pm #12679Ugh, those articles about “training” your SO are just gross.
February 15, 2012 at 8:01 pm #12685Interesting that this HAD to come up today for Parent/Teacher conferences, and that my oldest (age 11 1/2) HAD to just do something so monumentally stupid as to warrant mention.
He is in a group of elite readers. There are only two others in this group. His best friend, and a girl named “H”. H is a lot like my son and his friend “I”. As the teacher put it, “highly intelligent and eccentric”. Well, another teacher caught my son calling H a “bitch” today, and rightfully wrote him up. When asked about it, H said that my son had been doing it for the last few days, and that they hadn’t been fighting or anything, but she didn’t know WHY he was doing it, that they had been friends for the last few years. My son couldn’t articulate why he’d done it, just that he’d done it.
The teacher postulated that perhaps my son had a crush on the girl because they were on the same intellectual level.I raised my eyebrow at the teacher and asked her if she was sweeping it under the rug a bit, that it was okay for my son to call ANY girl a bitch, so long as there were “lovey” feelings implied or construed. She said no and looked embarassed. I told her that I would get to the bottom of it, and that my son WOULD be apologizing to H tomorrow. It’s perfectly fine to like someone. It’s not okay to belittle someone because you like them.
February 16, 2012 at 12:20 pm #12757i started to read this essay. it’s bizarre so far. i honestly think a lot of stuff is blown WAY out of proportion. kids chase each other. and yep, hair gets pulled. is that always abuse? um, no. can it be? yep. i distinctly remember chasing boys around the schoolyard, and them chasing me and my friends. neither side really knew what we’d do if we caught the other one. these arent teenagers we’re talking about, they’re 6 year olds.
i’m on the toughen up side of the argument. teach your kids how to handle themselves, not that everything that happens to them is injustice or bullying. sometimes, people in general are jerks. does that mean every single jerk is a bully? nope.
February 16, 2012 at 12:35 pm #12764I think there is a distinction between excusing the “abusers” behavior / not following up with “punishment” or recompense…and trying to explain to a little girl that there isn’t anything wrong with her because being bullied probably makes her feel bad about herself…
I think we are grouping it together when we should be separating it…the little girl should be getting an explanation and the little boy should be getting a learning lesson….this happens…all the time…and yes…it takes two seconds to add a caveat to the little girls conversation “he is doing this because he likes you, but he was rude and shouldn’t be doing that to you to show it” or something like that…I don’t have an issue with the excusing of the behavior in that manner, but I do have an issue with not adding that clarifier to it.
By the time kids actually are of age to start dating the teasing behavior should be gone…and if not the guy is an ass hole or woefully immature for his age and I think that is pretty widely understood. Another issue is that kids don’t seek an adult perspective when interacting romantically with each other so getting caught up with jerk guys seems like it’s the right thing to do because it’s probably the only thing people know up to a certain point.
February 16, 2012 at 12:42 pm #12765Another reason people tend to ‘sweep things under’ the rug is the teachers. When I was a kid, you did not disrespect your teachers. You were accountable for your behaviour in school. now? teachers arent allowed to really punish or discipline. And no, I’m not talking about paddling. As a generality, society expects schools to do everything for them, but then they dont. back and forth. again, no good answer.
February 16, 2012 at 1:01 pm #12769She’s saying that when a boy is mean to a girl that it shouldn’t just be brushed off as a sign of affection. I don’t see how that is controversial…
Kids fuck around and tease each other and do all kinds of stupid shit. That will happen. Kids are kids. What the lady who wrote the article has a problem with is the fact that girls (and boys, but mostly girls, I’d argue) are told to interpret it as a sign of affection. “Hey, it’s okay if he disrespects you because that really means that he has a crush on you. So just let it go.”
Do ALL boys who get away with that shit grow up to be abusers? No. Do ALL girls who endure that become victims who accept their partners’ abuse as a sign of love? No. And nowhere in the article does the author assert that claim. But it is part of a bigger picture, where society has a “boys will be boys” attitude that allows them to get away with shit that they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with (as an extreme example: saying women in the military should EXPECT to be raped because, come on, boys will be boys, amiright?).
Queen of the Couch just wants to raise her daughter to believe that being disrespected is unacceptable, and she wants to know if a teacher brushes off potential bullying as a sign of affection. What’s wrong with that? Teasing is NOT a sign of affection. Bullying isn’t either. I’m not FLATTERED when someone is mean to me, so I wouldn’t tell that bullshit to my own kids either.
And those of you who are discounting her opinion because she has the gall to be angry at something? That’s just another example of dismissing a woman for being emotional. “Shut up. You’re crazy. You’re too emotional to have a point.”
February 16, 2012 at 1:20 pm #12775I talked to my son last night. And his friend. Ooooh boy was THIS a complicated story.
Both boys can’t stand the girl, but are nice to her around adults. She’s a little bully. She picks on other kids, and then if she is tattled on, she twists things around and blames them for picking on her because she’s so smart and they don’t like it *sob*. She actually had been picking on my 2nd son for weeks (and yet, none of my kids thought to mention it to me, oddly enough). My oldest figured that he wouldn’t be believed, so he didn’t bother mentioning the bullying and just came out and admitted to calling her a bitch. *sigh*
Gave him a lecture on how he looks like an ass for calling someone names with no known provocation. Even if he wasn’t believed, by telling his side of the story, it’s at least known and recorded and if it keeps happening, it becomes a pattern and eventually, something will happen.Learning moment.
February 16, 2012 at 2:12 pm #12787@CatsMeow – i honestly dont care if it’s a girl or a boy, man or woman. I think people can overreact equally heh. She’s entitled to her own opinion, it’s her kid, her call. but we are all equally entitled to our own opinions too. When you put something out there for the world to see, opinions are formed. Do we really know the whole situation or who she is? Nope. Maybe she’s completely justified in feeling this way. Maybe it’s exaggerated. Only she and the people close to her will know, the rest of us are just random commentary.
February 16, 2012 at 2:45 pm #12793“I don’t think we should be labeling them as bad people either. I mean we should be educating them, saying “You’re being mean. She won’t like you if you treat her like that. Stop” instead of “You’re being cute! isn’t love grand”.”
rainbow – Nicely put.
CatsMeow – I completely agree with you. Perfectly stated.
February 16, 2012 at 3:13 pm #12801February 16, 2012 at 3:37 pm #12804February 16, 2012 at 10:25 pm #12857@rainbow- Just to clarify, I don’t think that boys who steal from girls or hit or whatever should be exempt from the rules because they did it to a girl. They should be given whatever (age-appropriate!) punishment is suitable for what they have done, and the school’s response should be identical regardless of the gender of the children involved in any altercation. (I do agree with what IWTTS said above about how standards are often too high for little kids, but that’s a different point.)
Where I take issue (i.e. where I think the article is ridiculous) is the idea that telling a girl that a boy teases her because he likes her is going to make her prone to be a domestic violence victim. In my experience, the idea of a boy teasing a girl because he likes her is something that boys are expected to grow out of, and again also in my own experience, when someone says that a boy teases you because he likes you, it’s generally with a “boys are stupid/silly” tone not a “you should be so happy about this!” tone (just my own memories and observations).
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