There was a segment on CBC National News yesterday about a mother of a Grade 2 French Immersion student with a peanut allergy who had been bullied in a rather unusual manner. No, he hadn’t been pushed, pulled or otherwise tormented in the way we might remember from our own time in grade school. This bully used a form of psychological warfare against the nut allergy victim.
According to the story, the bully went up to the peanut sufferer and whispered in his ear that he had rubbed nut residue on his clothing. The boy went home in a panic and told his mother what had transpired. The mother became alarmed and alerted the proper authorities. They conducted an investigation and confirmed the bully had said these horrible things, but there was no evidence nut residue had actually been rubbed on the unfortunate child.
And that’s about it. Other than an interview from some psychologist who opined that the incident was one of “assault” and a CBC reporter reminding us the child couldn’t be charged with said assault because he’s all of eight-years-old, that was the entire news report.
What’s amazing isn’t just the fact this story made the news, since the CBC has a proclivity for dredging the mundane. But the idea that a Grade 2 student making an idle threat about nut residue, that may or may not have existed in the first place being worthy of some kind of alarm-raising outcry, is disturbing.
Is this what the world has come to in the modern day of bubble wrap parenting? That some peanut allergy kid with a high level of gullibility has been “assaulted” because he was forced to endure the uncertainty of whether his clothing might be infected? I must say, I don’t have a great degree of confidence in the child’s intelligence since the invisible nut residue didn’t generate an allergic reaction before he had time to run home to mommy.
The post-bullying world we live in is cultivating these gullible momma’s boys by the millions. Whereas in my day one might handle this incident by bloodying the offender’s nose, we’re now teaching our children to be paranoid snitches. Now that the schoolyard fight has been removed from the equation, running to teacher or mommy is really the only option anyway.
It’s not that I’m insensitive to the genuine danger of peanut allergies. It’s the typical overreaction to the smallest incidents that is a symptom of a generation of parents who are micromanaging children’s behaviour to the point where we’re actually depriving them of solving their own problems.
In our desperation to avoid having our children experience the same horrible things we did, we rob them of an essential human experience. No, Johnny, don’t hit Simon. Work out your differences verbally. Well, it’s impossible for 8-year-olds to articulate emotions and desires, which is why children used to have a variety of methods to assert dominance in the nuanced power structure of prepubescent interpersonal relationships.
For those lacking wit or craft, there was the fist. For those lacking strength, there was deviousness and manipulation (the peanut allergy bully). And for those lacking both, there was charisma. We’ve reduced this now to a one-size-fits-all method in which we expect the power structure to be neutral, making everybody into the same nervous, paranoid easy marks that they are.
If you have a pack of dogs, you accept the fact that one dog will assert a level of dominance and each subordinate dog will find a place in the order. It’s only at the dog park that you see humans attempt to assert a neutral and artificial concept of equality. Children are a lot like dogs, since they lack the capacity for mature reasoning, empathy and respect, so they find other ways to create a hierarchy.
And adults, neurotic as we are, have destroyed that, all because we’re militantly fearful of having our children experience anything unpleasant. (Ironically, the segment preceding this one on the CBC was all about having children wear helmets while sledding).
There are genuine cases of bullying that still exist, though they’re rare and exist at the more mature grades. When a child decides to terrorize a large group of kids physically or emotionally, it’s something that should be addressed. But I haven’t seen any child like that in primary school. What I’ve seen is a fanatical attempt to push adult values on undeveloped minds by academics who obviously don’t remember what it was like to be a child.
The first time I realized anti-bullying had overreached its authority was when my six-year-old son was suspended from school for chasing a girl threatening to kiss her. He was suspended for sexual harrassment. The sick and perverted part of this is that the principal was inserting an adult desire that was impossible for my child to possess. He didn’t want to kiss the girl for sexual reasons. He didn’t even want to kiss her. He just enjoyed the way the threat made the girl fearful and exploited it to the fullest benefit.
As we grow up we learn all sorts of interesting and important ways to manipulate people. And let’s face it, the kids who learn how to push the buttons and get other children to do what they want aren’t the bullies. They end up being your bosses and your corporate owners. The passive, fearful child who runs to authority for protection will learn nothing. Except that solving problems with other people requires going to a person with greater power.
I don’t really believe bullying is as large a problem as we’ve made it out to be. What we have is a new generation of parents who want their children to grow up in a tolerant, pain-free, emotionless world. It’s a fantasy that doesn’t exist, so they’ve created rules and guidelines and PAC committees to enforce their delusions. All to the detriment of the next generation.
When I was actually assaulted by a group of neighborhood kids at that age my parents told me to soak them with the garden hose. It worked for a few days.
When they came back prepared for water my Dad told me a little secret. He said that I was too young to get into any trouble fighting them off. What I needed was a weapon. A 2×4 did the trick. When the 8 or 9 kids came back to our yard the next time I sent a few of them away with broken fingers. Their stupid plan was to sneak through my neighbors yards, where I was perfectly aware of them, and surround me in my yard. Then at the signal they would all jump in and beat me up. It worked the first time. I had the 2×4 ready the next time and cracked their fingers the minute they put them over the fence.
I imagine those bullies balling at the hospital and explaining how it happened. It still makes me smile. Dad was right. No Police came. -And the bullies learned the lesson the nanny staters can’t teach them. They never came back either.
…and to say nothing of the fact that there are hundreds of 8 year old kids that cannot bring a PB and J in their lunch. No healthy raw almonds etc. because of a child or 2 that have nut allergies? That simply makes zero sense when there are so many alternatives that doesn’t punish the majority and doesn’t bring unnecessary attention to the afflicted .
I too think this has gone to far and that kids have been bubble wrapped in a significant way. I call it ‘lazy parenting’ rather than what these adults think they are doing, ‘active parenting’.
I agree, it’s not bullying, it’s a generation of encouraging their children to be weak rather than strong, confident and assertive.
Fantastic post, btw!
Alex, that’s a good story. My wife said she was bullied as a kid until one day she snapped and attacked the girl. She grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head into the desk until it was bloody. The girl never bothered her again or said anything bad about her.
Before she attacked, she had tried everything else, including getting her parents involved. All that accomplished was a passive aggressive rumour the girl started about her promiscuity. The only solution in this case was physical violence. Worked.
Agree completely. Schools are so involved in removing any risk to all levels of everyday life that the end result will be children ill prepared for even the most trivial problems they will face as they get older. The three “R’s” have been replaced with social engineering that takes priority even in grade school. Every child is told they are special , a individual snowflake that is number one. Genderless waifs indoctrinated into believing what their parents may think as being immoral is actually a good thing . A new improved system where every child and teacher in school must accomodate the one child that has problems mentally or has a allergic reaction to a peanut. A system that is devoid of common sense or simple logic. A experiment that will have major repercussions when these children get older and will someday have to face a mean competitive world where they learn they are not number one and never have been. Glad my kids are no longer in the system but if they were I would take a second job in order to send them to private school.
Some insight to what our children are being bombarded with in school. The more further I went in to it, the more I wondered whatever happened to non political teaching the things I grew up with. History, science, geography,reading, writing, math etc.
forgot to add this
http://bctf.ca/SocialJustice.aspx?id=21406
Reminds me of an incident my daughter endured for a few months when my wife and I first moved to Calgary… A couple of little rich-kid spoiled brat boys found it amusing to taunt and torment my little girl relentlessly.
Meetings with their teacher went nowhere…”we’ll talk to the boys”was as far as it got and that made matters worse until one day she waited for them on the way home and beat them both black and blue. Goddamn principal had the nerve to call me to “discuss what my daughter did and take appropriate action”.. never mind she got them off school property. I promptly went down to the school, rose seven levels of Hell with the principal in the middle of the office and removed my daughter from the school.
good post. never let it be said that todays crop of parents are in anyway rational when it comes to their kids.
Agree with you totally. Physics dictates that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. When you fight physics you lose. The reason the kid has a nut allergy to begin with is probably because he was coddled from conception then lived in a house that was probably more sterile than your average hospital room. A dirty kid is a healthy kid my grandmother would say. I wonder if there is a study somewhere comparing farm kids to yuppie 60′s hippie raised bubble kids as far as allergies are concerned?
Adrian – you don’t know how severe that child’s peanut allergy might be. My husband had a colleague with a peanut allergy who accidentally came in contact with a contaminated donut. She died.
You do realize that peanut allergies can be fatal in many cases. It really isn’t any different than a kid walking up to another kid and threatening to kill him. I think this anti-bullying stuff often goes over the top too but this example you’ve provided is not.
No Quarter,
You actually had to remove your daughter from the school? That happened to me in Grade 7 when I was bullied. Although I wouldn’t say I was so much bullied as I was teased and ridiculed because I was receiving good marks. Thinking back, the school was aware of what was happening but did nothing.
Frances,
As I said, I’m not trivializing a medical condition. (Although if I’m going to be truthful about what I think, we already cater to the disability of 1% of the children to the detriment of the 99%). The point here is the overreaction to the incident, the qualification of it as an “assault”, and terming an isolated incident as a bullying. I have a friend who has a bad peanut allergy. We were roommates. I was allowed to eat peanut butter but we had a rule. No peanut butter knives in the sink. He was also militant about what he ate. For instance, he loved Tim Hortons but he’d never eat a donut for the same fear of contamination.
Ferrethouse,
I’m sure we all threatened to kill other kids in Grade 2. So what? The facts in this case show no evidence the kid actually smeared nut residue on the other kid. All he did was emotionally threaten the kid by preying on a fear. It’s the same as telling a person afraid of spiders that you’ve put one in their hair.
How is it that no one, I mean no one in my school had a “peanut allergy”? Where did this hysteria come from in just 20 years or so?
If the school suspended your six year son for sexual assault for trying to kiss a girl, there is something even sicker at the core of this PCism: To accuse a six year old of sexual assault is to consider that age of being consensual for sex i.e. pedophilia. Pedophiles are running the school system? Next they’ll be saying pedophiles are people too and should be a recognized and accepted group…I know, too late, they’re already trying that angle. And by reducing the bar of sexual assault to the age of a six year old fits right into their nefarious plans.
Nature abhors a vacuum and now that homosexuality must be embraced, pedophiles are next in line for liberal mainstream acceptance. They already have a legitimate front group called NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association) and are where “Egale” was a mere 20 years ago. They have feelings too and love children. I mean REALLY love children. It is no more inconceivable than the progress the gay/lesbian/transgendered/two spirited and other former perversions have made in the past two decades.
Hi, Adrian..
I removed my daughter from that particular school to express my infuriation with the principal. The idea that she had to endure such torment from two boys on school grounds while her mom and I got lip service and platitudes but nothing was done to address their behavior, yet he’d call me at work in a dither because she retaliated against them several blocks from the school, was pure partisan bs. So I put my daughter in a different school. She didn’t have any more problems.
TGM
I have a few bully story, too. The boy that was bullying me had a bike and he used to chase me down on mine and run me off of the road. That is, until I snuck in his yard one Sunday night before school and loosened every nut and bolt on his bike only to the point where it was about to fall off. Then when he saw me riding down the road tailing deliberately behind the caravan of bikes on their way to school that Monday morning, he gave chase. He was able to follow me for about 50 meters before every single part – wheels, handle bars, seat, chain, gears, brakes – all came apart at the same time. The ridicule from everyone alone made him lose his bully status.
Another time I and and two friends were being bullied by a gang of older boys who wouldn’t let us into the bush to access a cabin we had made, which they destroyed every time they found it. One day we were watching a Chuck Norris Vietnam War type of movie and it inspired us, and we learned to make traps – pits full of feces and pillow feathers, cups of urine suspended on pitched sticks, branches that were bent back and which would whip forward at forehead length. It only took that one last sourjorn into the bush chasing us before they left us alone.
Yet another time was in grade 9 when I joined the wrestling team. A few months after being part of the team, the subject of wrestling was being covered in our regular gym class. The same bully with the bike who forgot his first less 5 years previous decided to “pick” me for his partner. He was significantly larger and ended up being humiliated. He soundly ignored me after that.
Retributive humiliation worked wonder back in the day. But these days, there are more and more of these types of bullies who don’t know when to quit and are willing to up the ante dramatically and alarmingly if you fight back. My 10 year old son had a friend of his that was being picked on while on the bus ride home on a daily basis. When the boy had finally snapped and beat up the other boy pretty convincingly, the bully returned with a pocket knife and wanted to even the score. When he beat him up again, he said he would return with his father’s gun. Fights are almost never one-on-one, bullies often have friends that are willing to stop a fight once their leader is losing the upper hand. Its a different era, thats for sure.