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Bullying & Beyond…23.Who cares?

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Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.

 

When you are the victim of bullying, you want people to care about you. You want them to understand how you feel but you behave in the exact opposite way. You pretend you don’t care to protect yourself. You put up a front, isolate yourself and sink further into despair. You believe teachers don’t care and you believe parents don’t care.

What gets in the way of caring? As a mother who has witnessed the impact of bullying on children, here are my guesses why children change their behaviour…

1. Fear that teachers/parents will utter one more disparaging remark about them in front of the other students/siblings.

2. Feeling stupid because they don’t want to be feeling like this but they can’t help it.

3. Feeling frustrated because they feel silenced by bullying.

3. Shame because no matter how much effort they’ve put in, they can’t break the cycle of bullying by themselves.

5. Worry that their resilience is at breaking point and being terrified of what will happen to them if they can’t cope.

6. Feeling worthless because they can see that other students/siblings around them are getting better marks or making progress.

7. Guilt that they are upsetting their teachers/parents and feeling that they are a burden.

Dear Teacher/Parent, please care!  Please look beyond the puzzling behaviour that you, as a teacher or as a parent are seeing and realise that it is an ingenious front.  Please look at the pain this child is in and see what “I don’t care that you don’t care” looks like. Please empower yourself to care by seeking advice, which will help you realise what really matters here, their mental health.

Have you/your child had similar feelings because of bullying?

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

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Bullying & Beyond…21. A victim’s abject loneliness.

Abject … sunk to or existing in a low state or condition : very bad or severe…

Loneliness… being without company, sad from being alone…

If you feel lonely, you are ironically not alone in that feeling, you are one of many, part of a silent epidemic, not unique to Ireland…

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.independent.ie/irish-news/health/loneliness-a-silent-epidemic-and-the-last-taboo-in-ireland-37018602.html

And if you want to identify the different types of loneliness and why it matters, you might like to read…

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-happiness-project/201702/7-types-loneliness-and-why-it-matters%3famp

But when mental health is being impacted by bullying, loneliness is one of the many feelings you experience.  

It wasn’t unusual for our daughter to come home from school sad and lonely.  The cause, we’d eventually learn was the result of exclusion by bullies.

Some of this exclusion came inadvertly from her quiet nature, making it difficult for her to feel free and easy in a crowd unlike her younger brother.

It’s also possible that she was labeled ‘a snob,” her quietness being mistakenly judged and found lacking; labeled unfriendly, aloof or too big for her boots.

I am compelled to warn parents to be vigilant, as the exclusion our daughter felt was very real.  

Exclusion is just one piece of arsenal employed by bullies.  It is actually a very nasty and common tool used by bullies.  It is both physical and psychological in it’s make-up.  It takes only one bully to disrespect and isolate your child and soon the bully will manage to sway the other, easily led children to do the same.  Often the other children are uneducated on the topic of bullying and being uninformed, they are unaware of the powerful and damaging impact of their actions.

Soon your child is isolated…

Alone…

Lonely…

Confused…

Voiceless…

And they begin to wear the labels, “unfriendly, “shy,” “snobby,” “not good enough” until that feeling of loneliness permiates their entire being.

Slowly their inner monologue changes from warm and fun-loving to I’m alone, unwanted, unloved.  

Before you know it, it deepens to “there’s something wrong with me, and the bullie’s labels turn your child’s belief that they are “shy” into social anxiety.

Be mindful that any ongoing stress, even when professional support is sought out, can still trigger anxiety years later.  

Panic attacks can develop, leading to further self-exclusion or worse still panic disorder.  This feeling of being overwhelmed by any social interaction can lead to agoraphobia (ag-uh-ruh-FOE-be-uh), a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic and makes you feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed.  You can learn more here…

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/agoraphobia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355987

So don’t stand for bullying, address it immediately, be aware of the power of exclusion and don’t allow bullies to bully you into silence and loneliness through your child.

Have you or your child experienced exclusion? How did it affect your/your child’s inner monologue?

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

… to lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen — John Milton (in Sampson Agoniste)

 

Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.
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Bullying & Beyond… 18.Sauce, Diamond, Lynx.

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Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.

 

My writing has brought me through the best of times and the worst of times to a Spring of hope from a Winter of despair to paraphrase Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of two Cities.”

I’m breaking with my usual routine of sharing at the end of the week because, lets call a spade a spade, I have been let go again, unpaid, like every year, for 11 years now, for every holiday, from my teaching post until after the Easter holidays and so I get to spend time with my much loved and enjoyed family and writing instead of being with my much loved and enjoyed students, whose willingness to share their true selves with me… has brought me through the best of times and the worst of times to a Spring of hope from a Winter of despair!

And thanks to Paulas Light and her 3TC prompts for helping me to voice this…

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/74951/posts/2244712447

NAMELESS…

She might have thought
She got the sauce
When she retired
To a lush and early pension pot,

That Principal
With no principles or thought for
The children in her care,

Those innocent children, each a
Diamond, she was entrusted to polish
To bring them from the rough
To their most lustrous, luminous shine
She denied,

And so she left him,
unaided,
when he bravely told her
He was being bullied
Him, she left in no doubt,
That he was nothing;
NOTHING in her eyes
Far from a diamond,
Thanks to her cowardice…

“Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself”
As she said
Her damage, that depleated
The diamond of his right
To glow and shine,

Or brought his sister to the front of class

And belittled her grasp of maths

Until her peers laughed

Because of what as a

Principal and Teacher she had lost or

Worse still maybe never had..

But fear not
All is not lost,
Those diamonds
Once voiceless and violated
Have, thanks to the power of

LOVE

AND

LIGHT,

Found their inner sight and

Right to luminosity!

And fear not Mrs Principal
with no principles
Or thought for the children entrusted and dependant on your care,
For Face you will, the

Lynx that latently lies,
Lurking
Within
And your
Lush pension pot and early retirement
Will like the diamonds you failed to polish,
Quickly lose their shine and
Your demise will be one of unrelenting

SHAME…

You took our childrens childhood happiness by trampling on their cries for help,
whether it was the bullying you ignored or the bullying you perpetrated yourself
or the mental health implications,

You were implicit in creating or ignoring,

You crept inside our home
And you depleted
Our childrens childhood happiness
And bullied us, we now know, through their distress and left us unrequited…

But one day I know you’ll read this and you’ll realise, without a doubt, exactly who

You are

and what you’re made of,

And you’ll answer for it…

Have you been failed by the education system? Have you been bullied?  Just know that I have your corner, I hear you and you are a true and beautiful Diamond and you are not alone!

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

 

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Bullying & Beyond…17. Stand up, speak up!

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Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.

 

 

Your child is or has been bullied at school and you have found an opportunity to talk to them, making a written record of events as you discuss them, without being caught up in frustrating and emotionally upsetting arguments. Now pause to acknowledge the progress you have made, you’ve managed to… 6.Avoid the hook!

You’re now aware and can understand that the changes in behaviour you’ve seen are signs of bullying. Those signs probably included your child;

avoiding situations,
reducing their academic performance,
refusing to go to school,
lacking motivation, wanting to achieve goals but showing perfectionist traits, then appearing paralysed,
disappointed by not living up to the high standards they set themselves,
withdrawing into themselves,
being stressed, having emotional outbursts,
showing signs of anxiety, depression, OCD or specific phobias,
consuming excess alcohol, or maybe using drugs,
getting into trouble in school,
being charged with social disorder,
or engaging in self-harm
then…

If you are like me,
you probably struggle to know what to do.

You are unsure of where to turn next.

You are probably paralysed like we were.

You probably struggled to even accept the situation.

You wanted to wave a magic wand and fix everything…

If any of the above resonates with you, it is very important that you are pro-active. Do not allow bullying to render you paralysed. Your child might not want you to speak up for fear of making the situation worse or been seen as ‘a grass’ or a ‘cry-baby’. You must be very discreet but you must seek out support to help you stand up and speak up to bullying!

In this post I help you list what you can do.  Bullying & Beyond…20 Knowledge is Power!

Have you noticed your child’s behaviour changing? Have you struggled to understand the changes you’ve noticed.  Can you see it from a different perspective now?

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

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“Acceptance” on Monday’s Memory Lane…

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In this post I tried to share a parent’s exhilaration and gratitude at the sound of a toilet being flushed! I fully understand if you are confused and I invite you to step into my shoes by reading along…ACCEPTANCE!

Have you or your children struggled with the impact of school bullying?  How did it impact your/their/your families life/lives? Can you recall the first sign of recovery and how it made you feel?

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

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Bullying & Beyond… 16. Social Media, a Silent killer!…

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Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.

 

I’m always grateful when readers share their experiences with me, it starts a conversation on bullying and prompts further reflection.

I’d like to share two such responses to my post, Bullying & Beyond… 10.Painting the pain, part three.

Paula at Paula Light https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/74951

bravely said “I was bullied for being fat and nerdy and bad at sports. Thank God I could get away from the kids outside of school and escape into books and tv shows. I also found my own hobbies, such as needlepoint. But today, with social media, there’s no escape. That’s the worst ~ I can’t imagine the horror of never escaping the peer group.”

Parikhit Dutta at Weeping Pines https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/56154764

responded with empathy saying…
“I’m so glad for you Paula. It can be so frustrating to live the pains of bullying always, never being able to escape. And isn’t it a silent killer”.

My thanks to both Paula and Parikhit for prompting this post.

I can, from experience, confirm that bullying via social media is as noxious as poison gas, it is a silent killer!  

One Christmas while we were enjoying a family gathering our daughter was suffering in silence in the midst of us, as bullies targeted her with vile and upsetting messages on social media.   We were oblivious to this happening until our daughter could no longer contain her distress and broke down telling us.  Even after the girls in question were reprimanded and made close their social media accounts, the bullying continued because they were able to create new accounts using fake identification.

Bullying & Beyond… 10.Painting the Pain, part one.

Social media enables bullies to infiltrate the victim’s home; often the only safe space victims have. Online bullying is omnipresent, affecting children, adults and even Politicians, as we’ve seen during the United Kingdom’s Brexit attempts.

When bullying is frequent and continues over a protracted period it can cripple the victim leaving them distressed and confused. The implications can be life long, leaving them with low confidence and self-esteem, and can cause them intense dislike of themselves for being too fat, too thin, nerdy, shy or a miriad of other perfectly normal human characteristics just because a bully decided these traits were “unacceptable”.

Other sign of distress can include mood swings, anxiety, depression, insomnia, panic attacks, eating disorders, OCD, and finally but not exhaustively, self-harm until another innocent, tormented life could be lost to bullying.

Having witnessed the effect of online bullying I’d like to highlight to parents the distress children feel at, the horror of never escaping from this silent killer.”  I’d also like to stress the lasting impact of bullying and encourage parents, adults & society to be vigilant.

Have you or your children been bullied? Did you/they experience “the horror of never escaping the peer group” because of the pervasiveness of social media? Did you watch this silent killer in action?

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

19

Bullying & Beyond… 11. Resilience.

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Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.

Our son was having on-going problems with school bullying, resulting in school refusal and self-isolation, shared in Bullying & Beyond… 10.Painting the pain, part three.

While searching for support, I was told, by an adult in a position of responsibility that our son… “needed to be more resilient.”

I found their statement to be judgemental. Being judged by an adult and found lacking is not what any child needs when they are suffering because of bullying.

It’s true, being more resilient makes life easier.

It’s also true that children can be over sensitive and they need to be able to identify the difference between occasional teasing, and the type of verbal or physical abuse which deliberately sets out to do harm.

When behaviour has the goal or intention to deliberately hurt, and happens on an regular basis, it wears down a child’s resilience.

Children who are being bullied need empathy. They need their issues to be acknowledged and they need to be affirmed by a statement that says “You are very resilient to have coped with bullying for so long.”

The victim needs to be reassured that the problem lies with the bully, and not with them.

They also need to be informed of what action will be taken and a review date needs to be set. Sticking to the review date is vitally important as the victim has been rendered voiceless by constant bullying and will have lost trust in those around them.  We can gain their trust when we live up to our word and prove that we are trust worthy.

It is vitally important that a pro-active approach to bullying is fostered in every school to ensure that every victim of bullying is guaranteed the respect they deserve in a bully free zone.

Have you or your children experienced bullying?  Was your child’s resilience worn down? Did anybody have empathy for them and did it make a difference?

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

16

Bullying & Beyond…8.Perpetuating Social Norms…

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Time and the right conditions not only preserve but bring about something of beauty – Marie Clancy.

 

Today I would like to share T.S’s very emotive, true story from his blog “Crazywriterof6.” As I read T.S’s distressing reality, I felt my body became anxious.  I felt his apprehension and fear.  His sense of loneliness and isolation is palpable.  He says… “Maybe some of you can relate and see that even then, you weren’t alone”. No child should be in dread every day, isolated and living with the fear of bullying!

In my last post I wrote about the difficulty I had in supporting my children, both victims of bullying, because of the pressure on victims to remain silent.  You might like to read it… Big Boys…Don’t Cry!

We now hear in T.S’s own words, his deeply ingrained and debilitating belief as to why he was bullied… “The torture continued. Many moments before this event, many after. I have written some of them out, just to get them out. All this because I was different than the “normal people”, different from what society says I should be. Different because I was overweight”.  I believe he was not different… everybody is different and everybody has the right to be respected for who and how they are.

Please enhance your understanding by reading his story…

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/48424428/posts/20

At a funeral yesterday, one sentence struck me, that sentence was “We could all be better people,” meaning we could all do more to be there for others.

Let’s break down the silence and begin a cross cultural, worldwide conversation about bullying.  Let’s educate ourselves and our children about bullying and let’s tear down out-dated social norms.

Le grà,

Mindfully Marie xx

 

 

 

 

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Exhaustion or isolation…which is the lesser evil?

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When you have an invisible illness you hide it from others maybe for the fear of being judged or that people won’t understand.

Thankfully I’m getting better at being open about my CFS/Fibro. I’ve often been told how well I look or that I must have a great exercise routine but the truth is I’m just lucky to have a slim frame and have a good understanding of the importance of a balanced diet. In reality I often have to choose between getting a 20 minute walk or cooking the dinner because if I do one I certainly have to forfeit the other.

I’ve felt unwell since Easter but kept pushing myself to the limit to remain in the classroom with my students up to the summer holidays hoping I could recoup my energy then. I also rose to the challenge of an exciting new experience because I wanted some adventure, some fun and some new learning in my life, by attending ICASSI BONN 2017

While Bonn was wonderful it’s now apparent that I drained down an already low battery and as a result I’ve exacerbated a heart complaint. Now I’ve hit the wall.  I’ve had no choice but to stop.  I’m unable to function at home let alone work.

But the hardest part is I’m really missing the social interaction.  I live in the countryside and I feel the isolation.  I miss my colleagues and the daily conversations we had.  I miss my students. I miss being a part of their lives because they helped me take the focus off my own struggle with chronic pain. Their eagerness to contribute to our classes encouraged me to overcome some of my fatigue.  They let me into their lives and being focused on their goals got me through many days where I thought I would surely crumble under the stress that bullying was having on both our teenage children.

I soaked up my students’ warmth and inclusion.  We were partners in a learning space.  On a daily basis I let my students see my difficulty with spellings…how crazy is that I hear you say, a literacy tutor who struggles with spellings? Initially my students thought I should be an expert in spellings but my struggle showed them that it’s ok to make spelling errors and that spellings are something you can continue to improve throughout your lifetime. Soon they relaxed and worried less about spellings.

I have learned that I am not responsible for my students’ learning but I am responsible for my own teaching.  However the fibro fog, pain and exhaustion prevents me giving the level of service I want to give.  It makes the endless bureaucracy involved in the preparation of class materials and assessment requirements insurmountable.

Now I have to listen to my body and practice self-care.  I have to accept the exhaustion and isolation and that takes strength.  I have to recharge my own battery first and my one fear is can I ever sufficiently recharge a battery that is chronically drained?

Much love,

Marie xx

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