Bullies And the Zero Tolerance Policy by B.L. Hamilton

I know Konnie already commented on this last week, but I’d like to say, “I told you so!”

Okay, back when they first started this policy I didn’t have any way to make the powers that be listen to me, so they never heard my words, but I said them. I said it often because I know one major thing about bullies from sad experience. They’re favorite method of intimidation is to goad and harass their victim to the point that the victim lashes out, physically.

And given this knowledge, I knew, the zero tolerance policy would backfire, big time, because it would be punishing the victim and still avoiding or ignoring the real problem, which is of course the bullying. (Something they have been doing for a long time.)

I would go on to say I’ve been saying, “If you’d have listened to me, this wouldn’t be happening,” when the outcry over kids committing suicide over bullying started. Let’s face it, folks, if they can’t lash out at their abusers, how else are they going to get out of that untenable situation? And who could these poor victims have turned to for help?

After all, Adults have been ignoring schoolyard bullying for probably a whole lot longer than my school days, let alone this disastrous “Zero Tolerance” rule, but with said rule in place, the kids couldn’t do what the authorities wouldn’t do, and punish the abuser.

(By the way, for all those who take exception to me using the word abuser instead of bully, please look up the meaning of the two words. They are the same thing. And having been on the receiving end of a bully’s treatment, and having compared that to what officials say a spouse abuser does, I’m bound to say they are the same thing. )

Now back to the schools, even when I was a kid in school the teachers and other adults in authority ignored bullying. Why my sister and I got behind one year in school because we ditched so often we missed too much school, and we did it partly because the teachers did nothing about the fifth and sixth graders pushing around the first and second graders on the playground. Those kids literally would shove us out of the swings or off the other playground equipment and the teachers did nothing. If we complained, they told us to stop being such babies.

And that doesn’t even address the fact that through most of my junior high and high school career I was the victim of repeated propositions from the boys. Though the worst part of all of that is those boys were never taught the difference between a proposition and actually asking a girl out! And I’m afraid that situation is worse today. (I’ve actually addressed this topic in more than one of my stories.)

Back in my day, it was bad enough when guys wolf whistled or cat called when I walked down the hall, but I’m told now-a-days boys actually try to cop a feel in the hall! And no one does anything about it, but when the girl lashes out at her tormentors, she gets suspended! Outrageous!

All of this has to stop! We need to lay down the law, starting with name-calling; it’s unacceptable. We shouldn’t be allowing it, ever. If I had children, I wouldn’t allow name-calling in my house. I know how bad it is, and I know that is where bullying starts. I would also ban just touching someone without their permission, ergo, poking is not acceptable behavior. I’d teach everyone to respect everyone else’s personal space as well. And I’d discipline violators, so they actually learn it is not acceptable behavior.

And that is what I have to say about this deplorable situation.

Zero-Tolerance Bullies by Konnie Enos

The headline read, “Zero-tolerance policies ineffective”, as if it was something new.

We’ve all seen far too many stories of kids, bullied for years, finally “snapping” and either taking their own life or trying for a mass shooting. This zero tolerance system punishes them for their actions, but is ineffective in stopping those who picked on them.

Why? Because zero-tolerance doesn’t stop bullying. It encourages it.

Zero-tolerance tells bullies the authorities will help them pick on and humiliate their victims since the victims of bullying will get punished more often than the bullies will. Newsflash! Bullies like it when they have that much control.

Zero-tolerance tells victims they have no recourse. In fact if they say anything they will get punished before the bully will. That’s what zero-tolerance tells kids.

That’s what I see happening far too often in the stories I see in the news. Innocent victims either never fight back and take their own lives or finally snap and fight back only to have the authorities FINALLY notice, but they come down on them harder than they do the bully.

In all cases the bully’s get their way. The victim is humiliated, isolated and feeling lower than dirt. So why should the bullies change if the authorities are helping them?

And the problems of zero-tolerance go way beyond not punishing the bullies.

We have real problem when authorities are so concerned with violence that they have to expel a kid from school because he nibbled his pop tart into the shape of a gun or drew a picture of one. They focus so much on the harmless that they don’t address the class full of third graders calling a classmate fat every chance they can. They don’t address that boy poking that girl every time he walks past her, or that girl insisting on playing with that other girl’s long ponytail. They punish that girl for finally slugging that boy to make him stop snapping her bra, attempting to undo it in class but shrug at the boy’s actions. They suspend a tiny first grader because he fought off five fifth graders who were picking on him. (Fortunately for the first grader he had a black belt.)

Zero-tolerance policies dictate in often minute detail what a girl can and can’t wear to school but often the more detail they give on the girls attire, the less they give on the boys, i.e.: t-shirt and jeans compared to shirts must cover the collar bone and pants/skirts must cover the knees and nothing can be skin tight.

I’ve read dress codes where the girls’ guidelines were a full page and the boys’ were one paragraph.

And what does such policies do?

They just make it easier to pick on people thereby furthering the environment that bullies thrive in. No wonder zero-tolerance policies don’t work.

You can’t stop bullies by being bullies.

Let’s put some sanity back into our society and start teaching people to respect one another.

I’ve been facing down bullies since I was a tiny first grader. The best solution I came up with was in second grade. I showed the class bully some respect and befriended him. Not only did I not have a problem with him after that, but it also protected the kids in our class who were the usual outcasts.

Some bullies refuse to be befriended. That’s when you have to stand up, look them in the eye and tell them you’re not scared of them. It’s time to tell supporters of zero-tolerance that we’re not running from them anymore.

So I’m borrowing this phrase today, “Stop the insanity”.

Bad Day by B.L. Hamilton

We’ve all heard the edict to write every day, but how many of us actually do it? There are plenty of distractions, even for someone like me, who lives alone.

In the last week alone, I have a trip to Yellowstone, which took all day, and well. . . Have you ever been so sick, all you can think about is how much your stomach hurts, and praying you don’t have to run to the bathroom anytime time soon?

Some days, it’s just not possible to write even one paragraph, and sometimes that lasts for more than a week.

Here’s to hoping everyone else is feeling better than I am.

Happy writing everyone.

Seat Dominance by Konnie Enos

“Hey! I was here first!”

“That’s my spot!”

“I had dibs!”

“Move it! I was there first!”

When you have kids, you’re bound to hear them fighting over something and it’s not uncommon for them to fight over where they want to sit, be it in front of the TV, in the car or at the dinner table.

I can’t think of a family meal where someone didn’t ‘dib’ a seat or tell someone to move out of a seat they’d only left long enough to get something that was missing from the table. I’ve had to mediate arguments and even had one kid sulk in his bedroom rather than eat because he couldn’t sit where he wanted to.

Going somewhere with more than one child can be equally as bothersome because only one of them can be ‘shotgun’ and there is only so many window seats, so someone isn’t going to be happy. (Well, if I only take two I’m generally okay, any more than that and I may have an issue.)

The funny part is when my husband finds someone in his place, he generally just moves to their place. When he wants to lie down in his bed and finds one of his kids sitting there, generally talking to me, he sleeps in that kid’s bed so when said kid wants to get in their bed they’re stuck with waking him up and making him move. So I hear more things along the line of, “That’s my spot.”

Since this sort of thing happened in my family when I was growing up, and in the places I lived while away at college, I’m sure it’s a dynamic common in most households where more than two people live.

Anyway, since my kids are getting older, things like this don’t happen as much as they used to. It’s almost like we have assigned seats around here, at the table, in the car, in the living room. For one thing, it’s a given where I’m going to be sitting, and the kids and my husband generally fall in around me in a predictable order, so hearing complaints about someone being in someone else’s spot doesn’t happen very often around here.

Then a couple of weeks ago, that particular complaint was ringing throughout the house.

“Hey! I was sitting there!”

“That’s my spot!”

“Move it mister!”

And I had to laugh, watching my oldest son stand over the chair he wanted to sit in but couldn’t because it was occupied. That was at least the third, if not the fourth time in a matter of minutes that someone had voiced that complaint, always against one of the dogs.

The funny part was my son was just standing there looking rather perturbed at the chair and its occupant while from my viewpoint, I could see the back of the chair, but not who was in it.

Considering my youngest child is 15, and I’m the shortest member of the family, I figured it was a dog, yet again. Of our five dogs only one wouldn’t have been able to get into the chair because of her age and arthritis, and only two of those could sit high enough for me to see them from where I was, though even they could just curl up on the seat.

I asked my son which dog was in his way and he glared at the chair. “None! It’s Tiger!”

I laughed. His cat was in his way, and that meant all our non-caged animals were trying to take over.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.