Bullying

Thanks to The Bully Project for sponsoring my writing. Visit their website to join the movement and learn more.

Bullying is a subject that had affected my whole middle school experience. As I was growing up, the other kids noticed that I was different and they let me know. It was especially tough for me in Junior High School (what they call middle school now). I was never good in sports (as the stereotype goes). I dealt with this by trying to stay away from the limelight and by becoming a bookworm. That is how I dealt with the name calling and the funny looks, I used avoidance. And for the most part it worked. I also want to give myself some credit, I did use this situation to force myself to join a jogging club and the swim team. These were places that someone who didn’t fit in to the main stream could try athletics and I did not experience bullying there.

These experiences occurred 40 years ago. Either the bullying I experienced was not too severe, or people have just become more vicious.  Bullying in my day was no where near as hateful as it seems today, unless we just didn’t hear about it as much. Bullying itself is not a new phenomenon, but we have to increase our vigilance. We know a child is bullied every seven minutes in America. And bullies have far more tools to use, more than ever before: the explosion of social media is part of this escalation. Facebook, twitter, blogs, are now all tools for nasty people to belittle others. You could not reach a thousand students to bully a fellow student in the old days. Now you can, via Facebook or Twitter, with 1 typed sentence.

And life is full or irony. I am now a dad and I have a son who could easily be a bully. He is one of the biggest kids in his grade, he is strong, and he is fearless. The difference is, he has a dad who explains constantly how we have to accept everyone who is different, and even defend our friends if someone tries to bother them. It is like I am trying to teach him to use his strength for good, but the reality is he has 2 dads and could be a bullying target for that fact. He has to be prepared. That is why I try to help him to see both sides of these bullying situations to learn that they have to be prevented. This is also one reason we chose to raise him in New York City, one of the most diverse places in America. Everyone is different here! Sometimes I feel like I am training one of the boys who used to bully me, a chance to somehow repair my own past.

This year over 13 million American kids will be bullied. 8% percent of students will miss one day of class per month from fear of bullies. We all have to take action now.

I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. Find showings in your area for The Bully Project and buy tickets here. The trailer is below:

 

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All opinions are 100% my own and honest. Thanks to photobucket for the bullying picture.