An 11-year-old middle schooler committed suicide in a bathroom stall at her school on February 6th. I’ve only begun to see stories about it here on Friday and here today. The child went to a middle school here in Burlington County, not terribly far from where I live. How could this happen? I know how: nothing seems to effectively stop bullies, especially if the adults in the picture don’t act.
Why do children and adults bully? Is it a result of growing up in a home where they, themselves, are or have been bullied? I don’t know and I really don’t care. It’s never okay to be a bully.
Many of us have been bullied and have different ways of responding to get through it. I was bullied in junior high school. I was socially naïve when I entered seventh grade in 1967. My bullying began with a childish story I wrote for a creative writing assignment in English. The other students were brutal and continued to be throughout the year.
I had one friend, a quiet student who probably would’ve caught the brunt if the class hadn’t descended on me first. We were all in the enrichment track because of how we’d performed academically the year before.
It got so I didn’t want to go to school. Every morning, my stomach began to hurt. I couldn’t eat. I was filled with dread. At first, my parents thought I might have a virus and that saved me for a blessed week. After that, they realized it wasn’t a virus as I continued balking about going to school. It got to the point they’d have to literally drag me to the car and drive me to school.
My homeroom teacher noticed something was wrong and brought me out to the hallway to discuss it. I told her what was happening. She had me meet with my guidance counselor, who tried to convince me that it would be different next year. The thought of having to go through my junior high school years with this group of students made me burst into tears. I wanted off the track.
The counselor
couldn’t believe his ears. Didn’t I
realize that I would be bored if I left this enrichment track? I didn’t care. I
preferred boredom to the daily torment of one classmate after the other.
Reluctantly, he agreed to switch me to the next track down the following school year. I just had to get through the last few months of seventh grade.
The following year, I made friends with the other kids in my class. I was happy the rest of my time in junior high. I wasn’t bullied there anymore, nor in high school. I am very happy that I dropped that track because whenever I encountered any of those students in the halls during 8th and 9th grades, they attempted to insult and intimidate me. But I was confident, surrounded by friends who accepted me and so I laughed at them.
What would have happened if I’d stayed with that group? It might have been different later, as we got older. But what would have happened to me, emotionally? I don’t credit that counselor for saving me. I think it was the homeroom teacher who saw how unhappy I was. The rest of it was me, saving myself.
Two of my children were bullied. My son is on the spectrum, high functioning and brilliant. He was successful in elementary school but encountered bullies in middle school. His initial response was to humiliate them in the classroom by exposing their ignorance of topics. That didn’t endear him to some students. In shop class, one person got his revenge by throwing sawdust into my son’s eyes. Another vandalized his jacket and backpack. I went to the school and made a big stink and then something was done. In high school, my son took to practicing martial arts moves and successfully kept the bullies away during lunch.
My youngest daughter got bullied in elementary school. And why? Because she had a pixie haircut, the girls in her class told her that she must be a boy because her hair was short. With very straight hair, my daughter preferred to keep the length short and so this kind of thing followed her throughout high school. Then her sexuality was questioned in earnest. My daughter did have a group of friends she was close to throughout and so she ignored her tormentors as I did.
But it still hurts.
It’s terrible that bullying still runs rampant in schools, even when the parents and victimized students speak up. It’s not dealt with adequately or is minimized or, at worst, completely ignored. That seems to be what happened in the case of this young student from Mt. Holly.
Her mother has become very vocal about what’s happened. Both she and her daughter attempted to have the issue addressed and redressed, but complaints were ignored. And now that mom is without her child.
As for the bullies, do they feel any guilt for the death they caused? I’ll bet they don’t. They’ll have somehow put the blame on the child they victimized, leaving themselves free to torment the next student they want to bully.
