Driving by my kids’ former middle school with my oldest, we noticed teachers prepping for the new year. Memories came flooding back, and I joked, "Thank goodness those days are ancient history!" She laughed, saying, "I seriously hated that place!" Her three siblings felt the same way.
I was terribly bullied as a kid: because of where I lived (a neighborhood filled with immigrants, like my parents), teased about my ethnic name (they twisted Katkics into "cat shit"), and even my unbranded sneakers were mockingly called "Shoprite specials."
Back in the 70s and 80s, dealing with bullies had its own rhythm for us latchkey kids. My brother and I relied on a mix of thickening our skin, finding solace in friends (like us), and threw in a bit of "ignore it and it'll go away" attitude.
In my parenting journey, carrying my own childhood baggage, I was hyper-focused on nurturing my kids' uniqueness. Bullies stuck around, too. Their stories aren’t necessarily smoother or tougher, but bullying made school a drag... for all of us.
It also hammered home the importance of building resilience and creating a safe space for my kids and their pals, and that's got me wondering...
Ever had any run-ins with childhood bullies? How has that shaped your approach as a parent, guardian, or whatever awesome caregiving role you rock?
I’m interested to hear your experiences and thoughts—please share in the comments below!
I had a bully in in Lower School that continued in Middle School, since it was a 4k-12 private girls’ school. I was at my wit’s end! She was so cruel. I talked to my parents about it and my father told me to “if I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”
The next time she started in on me, I said exactly that. My heart was in my throat and it was hammering so hard I thought I would choke. BUT! It worked!! She was so surprised that I was dismissing her that she stopped and left me alone after that! God, I hated her
When I was a Senior in high school two of my best friends somehow decided I wasn't 'loyal' to them (I think I didn't want to go to one's locker to get her something, which kicked it off). They cooked up a plan to try to convince me that one of them (the one with the boyfriend) was pregnant. So they dropped hints that were too subtle for weeks. Until they enlisted another friend to flat out say "X thinks she's pregnant, what should she do?"
The hope was that I would spread a rumor and somehow it would get traced back to me and I would be unmasked in front of the whole school as a bad person. Luckily for me, I was too naive to catch on in the beginning, and I honestly think I forgot once I was told (which kind of did make me a bad friend, lol).
In the end, they admitted what they had done because they thought I thought X was pregnant (I had forgotten) and played it off like it was a joke. My immediate thought was "thank god we graduate soon and I never have to see them again" (and I didn't). The friend they enlisted confessed the whole plan, and we stayed cordial but not close.
It didn't ruin my experience of trusting people, or having friends, but I did become super sensitive around girls when my daughter was growing up. She was bulled for years, and we were proactive, sometimes too much so. We had some supportive teachers and some who ignored it. Luckily a friend recommended a therapist for my daughter which helped her, and helped us as well.
But just like I'll never forget my experience, she won't forget hers either. All you can do is move forward.
Aug 31, 2023·edited Aug 31, 2023Liked by Liz Thompson
Sadly, I have an experience that I have never been able to shake . . . it was 6th grade - I was a tween with frizzy hair, big glasses and braces. This one (popular/mean) girl went around to every boy in the classroom (it must have been recess or something) and asked them who was prettier - her or me? Naturally, they all said her, except for one - who then probably got picked on in return. It really left a mark to the point where I am now unapologetically myself and I teach my daughter to be herself and love herself and if someone doesn't they can kick rocks . . .
After being in a Montessori cocoon where I wasn't popular but wasn't singled out, I started public school in 6th grade. I was not well dressed, not cute, had big glasses and no self esteem and was too good at school. The bullying I experienced was mostly from the white boys, i.e. being told I was the ugliest girl in sixth grade, threats to shoot me in my glasses, leaving boogers in my desk. It was a terrible terrible time.
I didn't have a lot of problems with bullies in elementary or Middle School. Seventh grade the number one tough girl, Mimi Okasaki, took me under her wing. She happened to be in band and was first chair flute. I was 2nd or 3rd chair. So no one messed with me. Eight grade one girl threatened to beat me up and I remember being scared. But I think she mouthed off at me in front of a teacher and that was the end of that.
High Schcool was different. My Mom knew we were going to move from my blue-collar home town. So she sent me to a private high school. There were MAJOR class differences between me and most of my classmates. I always make two jokes about my HS experience. 1) If it were Pretty in Pink I would have been Andie and 2) that the mean girls weren't all named Heather but Tara and Kim.
The things that saved me are the music and theater programs and summer camp, Northeast Music Camp. I had started going to NMC the summer of 1982, just a few months after my father died. So by There, I found my tribe. So by the time I started HS in 1984, I really didn't give a shit what other people thought of me-I knew I had a whole group of friends who had seen me at my best and worst. And music was everything to me. I was big into discovering bands and going to concerts. Freshman and sophmore year I tried to be preppy and fit it. I hated it. Did it suck getting pushed into lockers? Yes. Did I hate some of the Taras and Kims with a burning passion? Yes. There was one girl in particular that if I saw her now I would likely tell her off. So if anyone knows a red-head named Tara Oolie, tell her she's got it comin'.
A note about my former middle school, Copeland Middle School in Rockaway, NJ....several years ago a young girl, a gymnast was bullied relentlessly. Apparently the administration did next to nothing about it and the girl unfortunately took her own life. :(
*CW: hair trauma... When I was 5 and in kindergarten, I’d been pushed ahead to first grade and the big kids were especially sh*tty. And I don't know what got into my insane DIY mum, because even though I had perfectly lovely white, blonde hair with little pigtails, one day... She decided to "give me a trim" and she cut it all off, to the point where I had bald patches. And I had to go to school like that! And this little sh*t-*ss boy, named Donald Trethewey, bullied the hell out of me and said, “Ha! Now, you're a boy!” To which I replied, “I most certainly am not. How do you know you’re not a bloody girl?” And I went back to my desk. I put my bald birdy head down, folded my arms over it, and wept. Donald was right. I looked like Michael Caine had been Benjamin Buttoned.
My teacher, Mrs. Hynes, took pity on me and ushered me into the office where she found a knitted cap to keep my head warm while I listened to mystified grown-ups whisper about how other mothers were not impromptu hairdressers. Who did she think she was?
Years later, when my youngest daughter was 13 and developed a crazy knot in her hair at the nape of her neck that was impossibly tangly—owing to the fact that she's a lazy brusher, she came to me in a fit of despair asking if I would cut the monster out. And as I crouched behind her on the sofa, she couldn't see as I was trying to very carefully snip it away, that I’d started to silently tear up, so scared, because I never ever wanted her to have to endure a "Donald".
Overnight it seemed, in sixth grade, several girls who were friends and lived close together started mocking me one morning. They mocked me, criticized me and bossed me around - and it was the same fall and winter in which my mother died of cancer. (I don't think the girls knew -- this wasn't talked about supportively at school in 1975-6 like it may be now.) I knew there was nothing wrong with me, but couldn't make sense of this campaign they were on. Thanks forever be to my two close friends that year who stuck with me and buffered me, passed notes with me, laughed at my jokes, and loved me.
I chose not to have kids. I have felt unsafe in any "publicly" exposed situation - "put yourself out there" at work, etc... I did eventually open my own CrossFit gym after I'd gone through a lot of evolution, and was in my 40s in another city. But anything that went remotely wrong there, socially, was very hard for me to deal with, with any confidence. I am still kind of scared when I share my writing in public - but I know that's scary for lots of people for lots of reasons.
I had a bully in in Lower School that continued in Middle School, since it was a 4k-12 private girls’ school. I was at my wit’s end! She was so cruel. I talked to my parents about it and my father told me to “if I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”
The next time she started in on me, I said exactly that. My heart was in my throat and it was hammering so hard I thought I would choke. BUT! It worked!! She was so surprised that I was dismissing her that she stopped and left me alone after that! God, I hated her
When I was a Senior in high school two of my best friends somehow decided I wasn't 'loyal' to them (I think I didn't want to go to one's locker to get her something, which kicked it off). They cooked up a plan to try to convince me that one of them (the one with the boyfriend) was pregnant. So they dropped hints that were too subtle for weeks. Until they enlisted another friend to flat out say "X thinks she's pregnant, what should she do?"
The hope was that I would spread a rumor and somehow it would get traced back to me and I would be unmasked in front of the whole school as a bad person. Luckily for me, I was too naive to catch on in the beginning, and I honestly think I forgot once I was told (which kind of did make me a bad friend, lol).
In the end, they admitted what they had done because they thought I thought X was pregnant (I had forgotten) and played it off like it was a joke. My immediate thought was "thank god we graduate soon and I never have to see them again" (and I didn't). The friend they enlisted confessed the whole plan, and we stayed cordial but not close.
It didn't ruin my experience of trusting people, or having friends, but I did become super sensitive around girls when my daughter was growing up. She was bulled for years, and we were proactive, sometimes too much so. We had some supportive teachers and some who ignored it. Luckily a friend recommended a therapist for my daughter which helped her, and helped us as well.
But just like I'll never forget my experience, she won't forget hers either. All you can do is move forward.
Sadly, I have an experience that I have never been able to shake . . . it was 6th grade - I was a tween with frizzy hair, big glasses and braces. This one (popular/mean) girl went around to every boy in the classroom (it must have been recess or something) and asked them who was prettier - her or me? Naturally, they all said her, except for one - who then probably got picked on in return. It really left a mark to the point where I am now unapologetically myself and I teach my daughter to be herself and love herself and if someone doesn't they can kick rocks . . .
After being in a Montessori cocoon where I wasn't popular but wasn't singled out, I started public school in 6th grade. I was not well dressed, not cute, had big glasses and no self esteem and was too good at school. The bullying I experienced was mostly from the white boys, i.e. being told I was the ugliest girl in sixth grade, threats to shoot me in my glasses, leaving boogers in my desk. It was a terrible terrible time.
I didn't have a lot of problems with bullies in elementary or Middle School. Seventh grade the number one tough girl, Mimi Okasaki, took me under her wing. She happened to be in band and was first chair flute. I was 2nd or 3rd chair. So no one messed with me. Eight grade one girl threatened to beat me up and I remember being scared. But I think she mouthed off at me in front of a teacher and that was the end of that.
High Schcool was different. My Mom knew we were going to move from my blue-collar home town. So she sent me to a private high school. There were MAJOR class differences between me and most of my classmates. I always make two jokes about my HS experience. 1) If it were Pretty in Pink I would have been Andie and 2) that the mean girls weren't all named Heather but Tara and Kim.
The things that saved me are the music and theater programs and summer camp, Northeast Music Camp. I had started going to NMC the summer of 1982, just a few months after my father died. So by There, I found my tribe. So by the time I started HS in 1984, I really didn't give a shit what other people thought of me-I knew I had a whole group of friends who had seen me at my best and worst. And music was everything to me. I was big into discovering bands and going to concerts. Freshman and sophmore year I tried to be preppy and fit it. I hated it. Did it suck getting pushed into lockers? Yes. Did I hate some of the Taras and Kims with a burning passion? Yes. There was one girl in particular that if I saw her now I would likely tell her off. So if anyone knows a red-head named Tara Oolie, tell her she's got it comin'.
A note about my former middle school, Copeland Middle School in Rockaway, NJ....several years ago a young girl, a gymnast was bullied relentlessly. Apparently the administration did next to nothing about it and the girl unfortunately took her own life. :(
*CW: hair trauma... When I was 5 and in kindergarten, I’d been pushed ahead to first grade and the big kids were especially sh*tty. And I don't know what got into my insane DIY mum, because even though I had perfectly lovely white, blonde hair with little pigtails, one day... She decided to "give me a trim" and she cut it all off, to the point where I had bald patches. And I had to go to school like that! And this little sh*t-*ss boy, named Donald Trethewey, bullied the hell out of me and said, “Ha! Now, you're a boy!” To which I replied, “I most certainly am not. How do you know you’re not a bloody girl?” And I went back to my desk. I put my bald birdy head down, folded my arms over it, and wept. Donald was right. I looked like Michael Caine had been Benjamin Buttoned.
My teacher, Mrs. Hynes, took pity on me and ushered me into the office where she found a knitted cap to keep my head warm while I listened to mystified grown-ups whisper about how other mothers were not impromptu hairdressers. Who did she think she was?
Years later, when my youngest daughter was 13 and developed a crazy knot in her hair at the nape of her neck that was impossibly tangly—owing to the fact that she's a lazy brusher, she came to me in a fit of despair asking if I would cut the monster out. And as I crouched behind her on the sofa, she couldn't see as I was trying to very carefully snip it away, that I’d started to silently tear up, so scared, because I never ever wanted her to have to endure a "Donald".
Such quantum entanglements… these bullies.
Thanks, Liz, for asking this question.
Overnight it seemed, in sixth grade, several girls who were friends and lived close together started mocking me one morning. They mocked me, criticized me and bossed me around - and it was the same fall and winter in which my mother died of cancer. (I don't think the girls knew -- this wasn't talked about supportively at school in 1975-6 like it may be now.) I knew there was nothing wrong with me, but couldn't make sense of this campaign they were on. Thanks forever be to my two close friends that year who stuck with me and buffered me, passed notes with me, laughed at my jokes, and loved me.
I chose not to have kids. I have felt unsafe in any "publicly" exposed situation - "put yourself out there" at work, etc... I did eventually open my own CrossFit gym after I'd gone through a lot of evolution, and was in my 40s in another city. But anything that went remotely wrong there, socially, was very hard for me to deal with, with any confidence. I am still kind of scared when I share my writing in public - but I know that's scary for lots of people for lots of reasons.
I send so much love and support to all of us who were miserable from bullying or being picked on.