Drawing a line in the sandbox

Some years ago, when my son was in the first grade, an older kid in fourth grade got it into his head that my boy was an easy target. He started picking on him. It lasted a day and a half before my son caught him on the playground after school and beat the shit out of the kid in front of his friends. A few years later, my ex took my son out of school because a kid in his class was flicking him in the head during class, and my son tired of it. After school, he waited for the kid and his friends to walk by and punched the kid in the face. Once. The kid went crying to the principal, and my son's been in home schooling ever since. I'm not a proponent of violence as a way to solve problems, not at all. But I won't tell you that I think what my son did was wrong, either.

There's been a lot of talk lately about bullying, fueled by the death of Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old boy who, after years of the abuse, hanged himself from a tree in his own backyard. That's right, he was 13. There was also the case of Jaheem Herrera, an 11-year-old who was found hanging in his closet by a belt, dead. Let me say that once more: Jaheem was only 11! An 11-year-old child hung himself because he was tired of kids at his school teasing him! No charges will be filed in either case.

These are just two examples of a growing list of young kids committing suicide due to bullying. The issue of bullying comes up every few years, but only when the bullying causes 1) a kid to kill him or herself; or 2) a kid to take a gun to school with the intent of murdering the offender(s). Am I the only one who finds this unacceptable? We talked this issue over and over when Columbine happened. Did we learn nothing? How in the fuck do we continue allowing this to happen?

Look, folks, we can't have it both ways. We can't preach non-violence and allow kids to aggressively pursue bullying non-violently with name calling and teasing and posting nasty things on Twitter and Facebook about their chosen targets. It's not right that we tell our kids to suck it up, it's only words, and sticks and stones, and all that noise. It's clearly not working, and the reason it's not working is because it is, in fact, BULLSHIT! Words hurt. Take the current mid-term elections. This is the slimiest election year I can ever remember, with the "Taliban Dan" shit, and attacking someone's faith, and accusing others of witchcraft. If a politician can say it hurts their feelings to be called a bad christian, what right do we have to tell our kids that words are only words? We're setting our kids up for failure, not protecting them.

So what's the answer? How about we educate the teachers and the parents? I don't mean a day in some seminar, no no. I mean a month before school starts, we send teachers and parents to classes, three times a week, and educate them on the signs of what bullying looks like. Then, on the first day of school, we make it perfectly clear to all students that bullying will not be permitted, in any form, and the consequences will be severe. Perhaps something for everyone. No sports for the entire year. Automatic 10 point grade drop. Repeat offenders are expelled to study hall for the remainder of the school year and made to repeat that year. And I think we need to give principals the authority to mete out the punishments as they see fit, provided they work within a chosen set of guidelines. If these punishments seem harsh, I thank you. They're meant to sound harsh. When the alternative is kids killing themselves, the punishment for bullying MUST be harsh!

We can no longer afford to continue thinking of bullying as a right of passage, or a symptom of growing up. I'm not naive enough to believe bullying is going to go away, but we must change the rules to accommodate the times in which we live. This isn't the world of twenty years ago.

Remember, it was only eleven years ago when we were watching police and paramedics pulling dead bodies from a school in Denver. And we didn't have Twitter and Facebook in 1999.