What are you teaching your children?

My oldest daughter is home sick today so my husband took Tess to school (or the Island of the Lord of the Flies as we now call it). Here's his observation of what happened:

... Most of her KTech class were sitting on a couple benches while an aide read to them. There was no room on a bench to sit so she went to sit by herself on the floor. As Tess entered the circle one boy said, "Here's comes a baby!" and the other kids laughed and a couple kids made a few similar comments. Tess made a forced laugh too. The aide did not think it was funny. She was very angry with the kids. She made the boy sit right at her feet, and the other kids immediate started saying to the boy that he was a baby and he would cry. Other kids, girls and boys, started making jokes about being a fat baby, and one boy said something about him being a girl and having "boobs". The aide grew even angrier and scolded the boy strongly, saying "we don't say that kind of thing to our friends", and made him sit at her feet as well. Meanwhile a couple of other kids repeated the word "boobs" and the others laughed.

All this happened within about 60 seconds. The first minute of Tess's day ... and she had been needled and seen other kids needled and heard at least half a dozen hurtful remarks from her peers and seen everyone else laughing at them.

On the plus side, I am glad to see that the aide recognized that the tone the group took with one other was essentially one of harassment and took steps within her power to quell it. And I suppose I can take cold comfort in the fact that Tess is not the only kid being bullied... On the down side, I was sad to see that the kids in my child's class treat each other this way, and I fear that Tess will learn to bully in order to fit in and deflect harassment.

Needless to say, we're pulling her out of that school just as soon as we can get her enrolled elsewhere. We have an appointment at a Catholic school on Tuesday. But I'm torn about taking her out and leaving those other kids in an environment that has let this type of behavior develop. Part of me feels like I need to stick it out and make sure the school develops strong anti-bullying policies and programs. But I have to put my advocate hat aside and take care of my daughter's needs first.

Because this is a private school, I have very little hope that any action on my part would have a significant impact. I talked to another mother who's daughter was bullied there last year. That mother went all the way to the head of the company. Nothing was done and so she pulled her daughter from the school.

I think we need a national effort to teach our children respect - respect for themselves and respect for others. Children who respect themselves are less likely to be bullies and less likely to be bullied by others. I'm realistic. Children will be children and children can be cruel. But we, as adults, should make sure that cruelty is not the accepted norm in our schools.

We can begin by treating each other with a little more respect and serve as examples for our children. I'm not naive. I don't expect us all to just get along. We have different beliefs, backgrounds, etc. We don't have to agree about politics or religion. We don't even have to like each other. But we should treat each other with respect. We should lead by example.

This goes far beyond free speech, religion, politics, or bullying - it's an issue of basic human rights and dignity.