My older boy was involved in an incident with a rough classmate. He was pushed and kicked, even though that may not have been the intention. In the process of sorting out the situation, I was told that I should teach my son to fight back. One mother told me that she taught her own child to hit first before she gets hurt, with the assurance that she would sort things out for her later. This made me very uncomfortable, though I could see where she was coming from. Of course no mother wants their child to be hurt, but I also could not bring myself to teach my son to hurt others. I told him he could defend himself by not hurting. In the PAGASA workshops, we are reminded that we cannot solve a problem with the same tools--actions, plans, mindsets--that created it. That's a big AHA moment. If your approach to life is simply on the level of your own children, it would be easy to tell them to hurt first to protect themselves. But if you're thinking beyond that and asking questions about what kind of values you want to instill in your children so that they can grow up behaving responsibly and with love towards others, fully aware that their thoughts and deeds shape the world, teaching them it's okay to hurt is not an option. Make no mistake, my child was hurt but he was also angry. I let him be angry. He expressed it many times at home, so I'm confident that this sort of bullying won't happen to him again because he will find a way through it next time, and hopefully not through hurting. On the one hand others keep telling him to fight back, on the other I've told him that he can find his own way of defense. I am hoping this tension will help him see that there are options and he can exercise them. You cannot solve problems with the same tools that created them. If we become bearers of change in the world--towards integration, peace, spiritual evolution--our options shift radically. I hope that I have armed my son with true grit and love and I trust that he will find his way without being an instrument of pain, violence and further separation.
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this issue. My boys have also been victims of bullying, and this hurts me so. I don't really know what to tell them when this bullying happens. I don't want them to fight back by hurting back, but at the same time I don't want them to back out from a fight lest they be perceived soft, and thus attract some more bullying. I don't want them to think that not fighting back means letting yourself be abused by others. Then your article, gave me a breakthrough. Why do I seem to be doing the problem solving? I'm not here to solve their problems. I'm merely a facilitator. I should instead be digging their thoughts on how they feel they should react to these kinds of situation. Kids are a spring well of bright ideas, how did I forget? Bullies are really an opportunity for them to exercise creative thinking early on in their lives.
So, thanks for leading me to this breakthrough thinking.
Thanks, Joyce. Believe me, all this only came together for me on the last day of the Baguio PAGASA this week. I've been doing that workshop for a year now but it was only yesterday that the thought flowed into me and connected to this particular dilemma in my life. I never saw it that way, but it gave me a clear understanding of my discomfort and what I ended up doing. When this happened to my son, I was truly torn between what I was feeling was right (not to teach him to hurt) and what others were telling me (he has to defend himself by hurting first). It takes time, but since we've been carrying the question, there it is. :)
that was just one of the reasons why i homeschooled my pre-teen kids. for us to be the greatest influence in their lives more than their peers. i recall one of my kids having her share of being bullied one time or another but she got through the situation without being resentful or traumatized. what i noticed to those kids who are bullied it's either the kid develops a low self-esteem or the kid learns to fight back thus the possibility of also becoming one so as not be labelled being a weakling. i don't want my kids to learn their classmates way of dealing with class bullies. i told them that those kids needed so much love and care that's why they should see it as an opportunity to win these kids as friends, no need to fight back or provoke another into anger. after all, it takes two angry people for a fight to happen.
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