Four things I’ve learned or relearned about bullying this month

1. We all have stories. (Many of you have been generous enough to share them with me. Thank you.) We played different roles in those stories: teased or teasing, standing by or standing up for someone, some mix of all of these. But we have in common the vividness with which those stories have stayed with us or can come back to us when we think about them. They remain a part of us.

2. There’s a desire for those stories to be simple–to talk about a single bully, a single bullied kid, a neatly defined collection of incidents, a clear-cut resolution, a straightforward narrative–but the real story is often more complicated, and rarely involves one tormentor, one victim, protagonist and antagonist neatly laid out for everyone to see. Instead it’s about groups and the microsocieties they form, often with no one clearly in charge, often with many of the tormentors thinking of themselves as among those chiming in from the sidelines, not realizing they’re really doing anything, not clearly seeing the cumulative effect that they’re a of. It’s also a story whose roles are not static; today’s child who teased or stood by can be tomorrow’s child who told her friends to knock it off and vice versa.

3. There’s also something of an instinct toward seeing bullied kids as sad victims, and to feeling a little sorry for them when they share their stories, even years and years later. This can make sharing these stories a little uncomfortable. It also makes it easy to lose sight that there’s a fair amount of pride in having survived and moved on to build adult lives, and that acknowledging the past is very different from being controlled by or still living it. And the thing is, today’s children can pick up on pity as surely as today’s adults can. If we act out of pity, it’s harder to reach a kid than if we act out of caring, compassion, and genuinely liking them. This sometimes seems a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one.

4. One of the biggest reasons kids tease others or stand by and let such teasing happen is that they’re terrified they’ll be tormented or excluded next. Some kids find the courage to set that fear aside and act with kindness more readily than others, and I don’t know why, but I do know that who has courage can change day to day, too. I’m coming to understand it’s important to acknowledge just how much courage it takes to defend someone being teased, or even simply not to join in when others tease them. Small acts of kindness matter tremendously, and we need to teach them to our children–model them for our children–always. But we also need to somehow teach them that they can be brave, and that it’s worth being brave, so that they can find the courage to put that impulse toward kindness, which I continue to believe is often already there, into practice.

As I’ve been talking about bullying this week, I’ve been getting a sense once again–as we all did when contributors for Young Adult Authors Against Bullying and Dear Bully first stepped forward–of just how many people bullying and teasing experiences resonate for. Here and in email, some of you have been telling me pieces of your stories, and I’ve been reading through the other essays in the Dear Bully anthology the past couple weeks, too. One way or another, so many of our lives have been touched by this, which is why I think the anthology happened in the first place.

And today I find myself wanting to say: you’re amazing. Those of you who have shared your stories and those of you who are holding them close. Those who were teased or abused or otherwise treated badly, one times or many times, in school or at home, as kids or teens or adults. Those of you who weren’t teased, but who maybe stood up for someone who needed to be stood up for. Those of you who maybe didn’t always stand up for others, but who are doing so now.

All of you, being present in the world, living your lives. You’re amazing and awesome and the world is so much better for you.

That is all.

Dear Bully

The Dear Bully anthology, edited by Carrie Jones and Megan Kelly Hall,with essays from 70 different authors (including me) talking about their bullying experiences, is out this week.

My own bullying experiences–which didn’t involve any specific person, but pretty much my entire school, through elementary school and junior high–pretty much defined my school experiences. I’ve never made any secret of them, and I never saw them afterwards as a source of shame. In a strange way, I see them as a source of pride: because here I am, still standing and happy and living my life and no longer defined by those experiences; and also because through all those years I never gave up pieces of myself in an attempt to fit in, something many of my supposedly more fortunate classmates can’t say.

But I also don’t wish those experiences on anyone, which is why … even though it feels strangely exposing to share my story in so public a place … I knew I had to do so. I don’t honestly know how much difference a single anthology will make, but if we don’t try to do what we can we’ll make no difference at all, and even if all the book does is tell a handful of kids, hey, other people have gone through this too, that’s no small thing.

I’m grateful for all the work the editors put into gathering our narratives together. It’s no small task, and it was done entirely as a volunteer effort (all editor/author proceeds are going to the charity Stomp Out Bullying), and it’s good to see it out in the world.

It’s not you. It’s them.

From shweta-narayan, the worst thing you can tell a bullied kid: “If they don’t like you, you must be doing something wrong.”

Which got me to thinking about how one of the best possible things you can say to a bullied kid is the direct opposite of this: “It’s not you. It’s them.”

Those are the words I heard over and over again, not from other kids … of course not from them … but from the adults in my life.

“It’s not you. It’s them.”

Eventually, somehow, I believed it. Not that I thought I was perfect, but … I came to understand, deep down, that I wasn’t the one who was broken or monstrous. The kids who were tormenting me were.

It took me years to understand how lucky I was.

“It’s not you. It’s them.” I think those words were one of the things that saved me.

Sometimes, the things adults say have power after all.

Bullying: the question of what to do

klwilliams asks the reasonable question what can non-bullied kids do about bullying. I don’t know how to make it stop, though I know there are intervention programs in schools–involving the whole school, from admin to kids–that have managed to do some good. _twilight_ has some useful-sounding suggestions.

But more and more, thinking about it, what one kid who can’t make it stop can do, I think? Is to be kind to the bullied kid. Talk to that kid the same way you’d talk to anyone else, like an ordinary human being. Don’t only do this when your friends aren’t watching–when there’s no risk to you. (I had a kid tell me in the second grade that she’d be nice to me, but only when no one was looking. I pretty much lost all respect for her that day.) Do it as a matter of course, day in and day out.

Not taking part is a start. But I think if all you do is don’t take part, to a bullied kid you’re just sort of part of the vast mass of kids who hate her, maybe not one of the worst tormentors, maybe not a ringleader, but not someone who’s any help or comfort, either.

I mean, think about it. Deciding “I won’t kick that kid” really is the minimum anyone who’s a halfway decent human being should do. Who notices all the people who don’t kick us as a matter of course? It might be huge to the person not doing the kicking, but the person not being kicked really isn’t going to be grateful, especially if they get kicked enough to bruise on a regular basis by others anyway.

But being kind and offering a smile and a hello and an occasional conversation? Even if you can’t stop the kicking, that’s something real, and in some small way can help, so long as the kindnesses don’t stop whenever someone else happens to be watching.

And if you try more, and don’t change anything? One thread that keeps coming up in the stories I’m reading is that the people who honestly tried to do something, even if they failed, were a help, and made a difference, because their actions told the kids in question that at least they were worth fighting for.

As adults we can keep talking about it and keep trying to be kind, too, to other kids and adults both. It’s not a solution. But it is a start.

Other thoughts and general discussion welcome here.

More bullying story links

Yesterday I posted my bullying story. Others have been doing the same–here are some of their links:

– Carrie Jones: Bullying and me
– Carrie Jones: Phoebe Prince, authors, Em, and bullying
– Saundra Mitchell: There’s a light
– Jeannine Garsee: More than just “bullying”
– S.A. Putnam: My story – part one
– S.A. Putnam: My story – part two
– Aubrey @ My Pile of Books: Young adult authors against bullying
– Erin Dionne: For Phoebe Prince
– Audry Taylor: The hidden bully
– Kerry Madden: Bullies …”
– Miriam S. Forster: On bullying and being alone

Thank you, all, for sharing your stories, for hanging in there, for making being here on the other side and talking about it.

Here’s one more link: to the group that began this, YA Authors Against Bullying.

If anyone knows of other links I’ve missed, let me know, and I’ll add them.

YA Authors Against Bullying

Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones have started the facebook group
YA Authors Against Bullying in response to Phoebe Prince’s suicide after being bullied by classmates, and as a result various writers have started sharing their bullying experiences.

Here’s carriejones talking about her experiences with bullying and her daughter’s. Here’s onegrapeshy doing the same.

And here’s me.

For me, bullying was about the day-in, day-out business of my school days being filled with teasing and name-calling inside and hair-pulling and rocks being thrown at me outside, pretty much from kindergarten on. The name-calling hurt more than the rocks, but I suspect it was the rock-throwing that got administration to notice, and to allow me, by fifth grade, my last year of elementary school, to sit in the office after lunch reading instead of having to go out on the schoolyard every day, which was a huge relief. Better still was when our school’s lunch lady, Lucy, befriended me, and invited me to help her clean up in the kitchen after lunch, which was actually a highly coveted job in my elementary school.

It’s easy to think that adults have little power when it comes to bullying, yet in so many ways it was the kindnesses of adults that helped save me. Because my elementary school actually didn’t ignore the problem, and did try to do something about it: I always knew the principal, Mr. Mangipane, was on my side, too, talking to the other kids over and over again, telling them this wasn’t right. I don’t know that it changed them, but it meant something to me.

And then there was my mom, reminding me over and over again of two important things: first, that the problem wasn’t me, it was them, and second that things really, truly, would get better one day. Maybe I’d have blown this off if I heard it only once or twice, but I heard it constantly, throughout my childhood, and somehow with all that repetition I managed, in some deep way, to believe it. Having a sense of story–from books, and from imaginary play that was just beginning to shape itself into words–helped, too. Because in stories, things got better, and downtrodden characters triumphed in the end, and these things were not at all trivial. They helped me through, too.

It was my mom who asked to have me changed to a different school for junior high, where I’d be among a different group of kids. That should have helped–but by then, well, I took every joke, every insult, as deadly serious and personal, and burst into tears. Within three days of starting at my knew school everyone knew me, once again, as that kid–you know, the one who seems to be in every school, the one who everyone picks on, the one who it’s sort of safe to pick on, even expected, who even if you’re otherwise think of yourself as a “nice” kid you don’t dare to be friends with for fear it might make you look bad among your “real” friends, the one who you tell yourself it doesn’t quite count to be mean to, at least while others around and can see. That kid.

The other kids still didn’t stick to words, and by then, neither did I–I lashed out and fought to the death when taunted. Sixth grade was horrible, pretty much the worst year of my life. (To this day, if I’m having a hard time, I’ll remind myself that at least it’s not as bad as sixth grade.) My teachers wondered why in my classes I’d start crying for no reason. When one of my tormenters kicked me, I kicked back, broke her finger, and got suspended. I stabbed a couple kids with pencils, too, and got good at digging fingernails into skin. Even now, I can’t remember any of those incidents without also remembering the pain I felt behind them. All I really wanted, by then, was to be left alone.

I probably would have been expelled, if I were in school now, with all our zero-tolerance policies. As it was, this school was larger and less supportive than my elementary school; I entered junior high school with a note on file telling my teachers that I was dangerous. (My Mom found out. The note was removed. That’s a whole story of its own.)

Looking back at sixth grade–that should have been the year that broke me. I don’t fully understand why it didn’t. By seventh grade I was writing regularly in notebooks–that must have had something to do with it. I knew how stories went. In my notebooks, I knew that I, too, would somehow triumph in the end, and–yes–turn all that had happened into more stories in turn.

What happened in seventh grade was: I stopped caring. I don’t know exactly how I got there. But by seventh grade, I didn’t care what other people thought of me anymore. I wanted friends, but I knew I would give up no part of myself, of who I was, to have them–those friends would just have to take me or leave me, as I was.

Halfway through seventh grade, the kids at the unpopular kids’ lunch table I’d been sitting at came to me, and asked me, please, could I stop sitting with them? Their lives were so hard already, they said, and I was only making things harder for them, by being seen with them. I think they expected me to understand, to have sympathy for their plight. What I understood was this: I was free. I didn’t have to pretend to be sort-of with them in order to have a place in the cafeteria, didn’t have to pretend to be sort-of friends, when we all knew better. I got to sit alone, and it turned out that was better than trying to find someone to sit with. There was some bullying still, milk squirted at me by some troublemaking boys, that sort of thing, but that was small stuff by then. I could handle sitting alone better than I could handle pretending to be someone I wasn’t, even in small ways.

Being alone isn’t so bad, and I mean that honestly. I’d always enjoyed spending some time alone, and I’ve always craved alone time in my life, and get on edge and unbalanced if I don’t have it. I didn’t want to be alone all the time, exactly, but I’d done it for long enough by then (during school hours, at least) that I could handle it. I sometimes wonder how many of the self-damaging decisions people make are made because they fear being alone too much, more than the things they choose instead of that, which are often far more frightening.

Anyway, by eight grade, ninth grade–slowly, quietly–things began getting better. I made a few friends–real friends, keeper friends–for the first time in my life, and finding a few people I could really connect with made a huge difference.

I have one more particularly vivid bullying memory, right before high school (which began in tenth grade for me), at the town pool. A group of girls, maybe a year younger than me, had ganged up on me, and as I kicked and pulled hair and attacked with my fingernails and mostly just tried to get away from them, one of them said something like, “You think you’re escaping. You think you’re going to go to high school and things will get better, but we own this town.”

They were wrong. I did get away and things did get better, just like the adults around me and the stories I read had told me they would. High school wasn’t perfect–people still whispered my name unkindly in the halls, stray comments still reached my ears–but it was pretty good, actually–I did have a circle of friends by then, and the teasing was in the background, not something that defined me or my school experience anymore.

And in college, one day as I walked through the dorm halls, I realized the whispers had gone away entirely, and that no one was thinking of me as that kid anymore.

Writing that last paragraph made me tear up, even now, which I entirely wasn’t expecting. Had to stop a moment before going on. But by college, I was finding people who understood me, and who I understood, and those things were huge, and it was years before I took them for granted.

I was lucky. I found a way through, with the help of books and stories and supportive adults and who knows what-else other luck and stubborness and magic.

Not everyone is lucky. And no one should have to be that kid. This has to stop.

Whether you’re an adult with teens and kids in your life (offering reassurances that it’ll get better–or making clear that being one of the tormentors is not acceptable), or a teen or kid yourself (who’s maybe uncertain whether you dare to talk to or show kindness to or tell your other friends to knock off tormenting that classmate who everyone knows it’s safe to make fun of and you fear it’s not-so-safe to befriend), you have some role to play in stopping it. We all do.

And if you’re that kid, and reading this: it gets better, I promise. I can’t promise when. But I can promise that it will.

(ETA: All of the above isn’t intended as a call for pity, at all–it’s intended as one bit of anecdotal evidence of the fact that one can get make it through and out the other side. If you find yourself wanting to pity the child-that-I-was, don’t waste it on me–I’m here, after all, and whole, and where I wanted to be all those years ago. Put that energy into doing something, somehow, to help those who are there now instead, dealing with this thing that still happens too often and does too much damage–those who are not yet safely on the other side where they can look back and wonder at how it all worked out in the end.)