I have two daughters, ages 6 and 3. They love each other to bits and pieces – except for when they don’t. And when they don’t love each other, they fight like cats and dogs. It’s not uncommon for one of them to come running to me crying, “So-and-so isn’t sharing!” My response is standard, and almost always the same: “Work it out between yourselves. And if I hear one of you cry over this, you’re both going to be punished.” Maybe that doesn’t seem fair to you the reader, or to them – but it teaches my daughters negotiating and sharing skills, and more importantly, it saves me from having to referee whose Barbie gets a turn wearing the pink sparkly dress.
Similarly, sometimes the girls tattle on one another – “Eemee, she had a second cookie,” or some such nonsense. Let’s face it, I don’t really care about the second cookie (except for when I do), so my response is usually, “It’s not nice to tattle – unless someone is about to get hurt. Then it’s not tattling. Then you have to tell.”
So the other day, when my 6-year-old asked, “Eemee, can I tell you something?” (to which my answer is always the same: “Yes, of course, you can tell me anything.”), she continued by saying that a girl in her class had told a boy that it was a mistake that he was born. I couldn’t mask my horror; I gasped and said “Oh my gosh, that is the worst thing I’ve ever heard a child say to another!”
I do not know this boy at all – my daughter isn’t friends with him – but from the few conversations I’ve had with his mother at school-related events, I know that he comes from a troubled home, and that life isn’t always easy or fair for this child. For these reasons and more, maybe this child is an easy target for bullying. I asked my daughter what she did when she heard the little girl’s insult, and she said she told her teacher right away about what the little girl had said. When I asked my daughter what the teacher said, she told me the teacher talked to both the girl and the boy.
I’m incredibly proud and pleased that my daughter stood up for her classmate by talking to the teacher. I always tell my kids that they don’t have to be friends with everyone, but they’re not allowed to be mean to anyone, either. My daughter could have joined in the taunt, but she recognized right away that her friend, the other girl, had done wrong – and she acted on it. In this case, she saw the hurt and didn’t think twice about “tattling.”
I’m not saying that my system is perfect – whose is? – but my goals remain the same. I want my girls to know right from wrong, and to be able to work out a compromise without asking an adult to intervene – except when they find themselves in a situation where they must have an adult intervene. I want them to be smart enough to think for themselves, and more importantly, I want them to be compassionate enough to think about others.
As for the future for all of the children involved, I hope that they learned something – that it’s not ok to bully, that it’s not ok to be bullied, and that it’s certainly not ok to stand idly by and watch the bullying happen.
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