Missing piece of the anti-bullying puzzle

The news this week out of Sydney, NS is evidence that the anti-bullying strategies so far implemented by the province have failed. Not only did one girl bully another, a second person stood by and made a recording of the bullying.

The incident as reported in The Cape Breton Post on October 16, 2013.

“The teen...was charged with assault after an incident at a local school in which she sucker punched another female student and then kicked the victim several times while she lay on the floor.

Drake said an added element to the assault was the fact the accused asked a friend to video tape the scene which was then posted to Facebook and other social media sites.

Defence lawyer Cheryl Morrison said her client denied asking a friend to video the assault. Drake said the friend admitted to being asked by the accused to film the attack.

The video was played Wednesday in court and shows the accused standing in the hallway and then running towards another female student and punching her in the head. The punch knocked the girl to the floor and the accused then proceeded to kick the girl in the head, arms, legs and chest.”

What is missing from this article is the question: how could this happen in a school hallway with no one stepping in to stop the attack? The answer is the oft cited bystander affect-- people witness a crime but are unable or unwilling to help the victim. The bystander effect plays a large roll in the continued presence of bullying in our schools and our society. When good people do nothing, evil wins.

Of course one of the most commonly cited reasons for people not acting in defence of others is that they were afraid for their own safety or were so stunned by what they were witnessing that they were unable to act.

The approaches to reduce bullying in the province, that I have seen to date, have failed to address this key piece in the anti-bullying puzzle.

Bullying is a cultural emergency. Why is it not dealt with in the same manner as we deal with other emergencies? Where are the anti-bullying drills, the anti-bullying protection classes and the mock bullying roll plays that have proved so useful in saving society from fire, medical emergencies and criminal elements that use physical violence against us?

Learning by doing, not just reading or watching films, helps people react in a real crisis situation. When a person is faced with a dangerous or fearful situation they must fall back on pre-learned behaviour, like a muscle memory, so they can operate. Unprepared, the automatic response to danger is to freeze or run away. If we want children and adults to stand up to bullies we need to do more than read books about how to do the right thing; we need to offer hands on practice.

Asking a bystander to stand up to a bully in action is like asking a man on the street to disarm a bomb. Without the confidence of training, the bystander is not able to take on the job even when they know action is required. Teaching through roll play, how to take control of a situation and how to feel confident enough to do so, will help decrease the bystander effect.

In the 1960s the Freedom Riders took on racism in the southern United States. They did not walk into a mob unprepared, but they did not bring weapons either. They practiced nonviolent responses to an overtly violent situation; they didn't just read books or watch films about Rosa Parks. They had to learn physically the lessons they already knew in their minds; racism was wrong and these were the actions that would help them defeat that evil.

Below are notes from a nonviolent training session held in 1963 for Freedom Riders heading south (http://www.crmvet.org/info/nv1.htm).

3. Purpose of nonviolence training: This session to simulate common situations and practice techniques & tactics for dealing with them. Familiarization. Remove fear of unknown & not knowing what to do. Increase understanding of dynamics of violence through direct experience. Develop generalized response patterns/habits. Instinctive reactions.

4. Format of: Direct action: Plan, —>Act, —>Critique. This training session similar pattern: Discussion, —>Role Play, —>Critique.

These notes are useful today in the struggle to stop bullying by reducing the bystander effect. I propose anti-bullying role play experiences be adopted into the curriculum. Only through hands on experience will our children have the tools to stand up to bullies.

Love is the best art of all --response

I watched the above Moth project story the other day about a mother who was obsessed about giving her children a very happy childhood. This became her obsession as a solution to her own off-kilter upbringing where her parents were so concerned over her, and her siblings, safety that they lost sight of the art of living.

Today as I thought more about this story, this woman's madness began to feel familiar. In her I could see pieces of my own mother who fought so hard not to give my sister and I the childhood that she had endured.

My mother was raised in a big family and most of the fun times were only fun in retrospect. Both her parents were abusive but the driving force behind it all was her mother.

Throughout my childhood I heard story after story of the abuse my mother or her siblings had survived at the hands of their parents. Whenever my mother and her siblings would get together they would relive and retell these stories like so war weary veterans.

I heard some of these stories so often that I almost thought they were my own.

In light of the physical abuse my mother had suffered, she was determined never to raise a hand to her own children, never to be her mother. That was her greatest fear.

So she took what she thought was the opposite approach to parenting. She was against corporal punishment of any kind. As long as she did not cross the line of physicality she thought she was safe. What my mother never seemed to realize is that one did not have to raise a hand to hurt a child.

My childhood seemed focused in the corner; hours standing there as punishment. Hours sitting at the table over cold meals which would be reheated until it was finally bedtime. Hours of my mother's faced pinched in anger and hatred all directed at me.

When I was twelve she finally broke through the barrier and hit me. She only did it once. I am sure she spent a lot of time thinking about that moment afterwards; and not about how I felt, but about how she felt to have crossed that line. It made her angrier at me. I had pushed her across that unforgivable line that made her no better, in her own eyes, than her mother.

Things had never been good but from that point on they got worse. She forced me to go to a therapist and when the therapist told her that he did not think there was anything wrong with me and that perhaps I should go to group therapy with people who had problems with their parents she called him a quack.

She was determined to have me declared mentally ill so that the onus was not on her; so our relationship could be my fault not hers. When that did not happen she left. But not before she told me she was leaving because she could not stand to live with me. I was 14 years old.

With my mother living away and only visiting a week here and there every five or six months, my teenage years got better. I loved my school, I had good friends, I was mostly enjoying life.

Then when I was seventeen my mother decided to come out of her self-imposed Northern exile and return to the city. She and my then nineteen year old sister took off like a tornado; clubbing almost every night, double dating and bringing strange men home. I went on being the only sane person in the house.

It didn't last.

In February of my Grade 12 year, my mother told me I had two weeks to find a job and move out. I can't say I looked for work. I was traumatized. I went to social services, went to my friends and my mother stood in my way. She refused to let social services get involved in my case; she said I had a parent and she would make the decisions and told my friends parents, who were willing to take me in until school finished, the same thing-- but not as politely.

She called my school and started making trouble for me, telling my teachers and the school guidance counsellor that she thought I was suicidal. Homicidal was more likely. And on and on it went.

In the first week of March I came home from a school cross-country ski trip to find my mother and sister waiting for me. They were taking me to the airport that evening and sending back to my father in Nova Scotia. I didn't want to go but I had no choice—my mother had cleared out my bank account to buy the ticket and hidden all my shoes so I would not run away in the still winter-ish Edmonton night.

My mother was desperate not to be the crazy that her mother had been. But she was a different crazy which was just as bad for me. Getting away from my mother was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

This year I attended my grandmother—my mother's mother—funeral.

My grandmother was not an easy woman. But I always maintained a relationship with her over the years because all the bad was laced with some good –even great—times. I have fantastic memories of my grandmother. Unfortunately I can not say the same for my own mother. If I think really hard I can't come up with one good memory. I am sure there must have been some good times but they are heavily outweighed by the bad.

These days my mother sends me occasional cards and sometimes calls to talk on Skype. She sees her grandkids electronically and has even met them in person a few times. This is the kind of contact I can survive—impersonal, distant, indifferent.

I won't tell my kids bad things about my mother, I won't forbid them to talk to her, I won't keep telling them how I am trying not to be my mother. Because I am not.

Sometimes in this mothering journey I get a little guilty about not being the mom who gets down on the floor to play. I can't help it—I am just not into Barbies anymore. I may feel a little guilty about working and shutting the kids out of my office—but you have to work to keep the fridge full and the heat on and the kids know that.

I have never tried to not be my mother. I was never like her and that was always part of the problem between us.

When I watched this story about the mother obsessively trying to make her kids every moment fun, the antithesis of her own childhood, I felt pretty good because I know I have done that without even trying--the antithesis part of the equation at least.

What I get up to when the kiddies go to school--Paddle

This morning's paddle from Cooks Cove to Dorts Cove.

No more kid free vacations

Cousin time

A mother should always vacation with her children. And this is not for the reasons you may be thinking—creating memories, educational experiences, bonding, etc.

No, it is because if you have time off from the mommy job it is really hard to readjust to being the one thing those little people can't live without.

Almost two years ago I went on vacation without my kids. Actually it wasn't really a vacation, although it often felt like one; I was flying solo –literally-- to Massachusetts for my grandfather's funeral. For reasons beyond my control, I could not take my children, who were 3 and 5 years old, at the time. So for five days I was kid-free. For the first time in years I was living free and easy; no crying, no fighting, no meals to get on the table at scheduled times.

The first night I arrived ended up being the first party night I had had in more than 5 years. My cousins and I, many of whom I had not seen in years, went out on the town. We went to a loud, raunchy bar, and then out for late night nachos. It was awesome. I didn't have to worry about getting home for a sitter or worry about dealing with little children while suffering from a pounding hangover the next day.

The rest of the week was a little less carefree. I attended a day's worth of wake for my grandfather, and his funeral the next. Despite that, it still felt like a vacation.

As I sat on the plane returning to Nova Scotia-- my mind was turning over the duality of life. I was looking forward to seeing my children but I did not have the same enthusiasm for returning to the mommy job.

It was a few days after I got back before I felt like I was back in mommy mode but I did learn a valuable lesson; those breaks that I often longed for from my kids were not worth the mental toll it took on me when I had to come back to my mommy world.

This summer I have had lots of vacation time; lots of time exploring new places and things with my kids. While sometimes I might have liked to be alone; it's been good to share these adventures. Right now it is time to make lunch as we spend our last weekend of the summer farm-sitting for some friends. Cows, chickens, a dog and a big barn--the kids are loving it and I am writing. What could be a more perfect vacation.

Run for my life

I run because I can't stop. Because if I stop I'll never start again.

I know in the past I have banned the word 'tired' from my vocabulary but that has not made the problem disappear.

I am so tired; so tired that I feel I am missing out on the best parts of life.

So I started running-- I run so that some part of my life feels like it is keeping up, like some part seems energetic. How could a person who can run 5 miles possibly be suffering from severe fatigue?

I run so I have a reason to be tired. Instead of just being tired for no known reason.

About three years ago I was so tired I couldn't move. I went to bed at 6 pm and if either of my two children who were 2 and 5 years old at the time needed anything; they had to fend for themselves.

When I got in bed, moving a leg from under the covers was physically impossible.

My doctor diagnosed me with hypo-thyroidism and I have been on synthetic thyroid hormone ever since and will be indefinitely. But I have not reclaimed the old me.

I was always defined as a hyper person-- one who needed to be weighed down with ballast to stay in one spot. Not any more.

I try not to think too much about being tired but sometimes I wonder how it is that I am going to live the rest of my life in this tired state.

Today I read an article in The New Yorker about a woman in a similar predicament—she became an extraordinary slave to her thyroid diagnoses and spent most of her time trying to find a cure for her disease. In the end she realized that she just had to accept that she would always be 80 percent well and live with it –instead of live by it.

I am used to living with chronic health problems – I have lived with one my entire life and I have taken it in my stride and I will live with this too. But some days it gets me down. Sometimes I just want to tell people that I just can't do one---more--- thing---today. In fact, I often do tell my kids; they are pretty used to putting their mother to bed.

So I run to fight back this disease/condition/this whatever-it-is that is slowing me down. I run and when I run I think about how I'll be tired for a reason that night.

Da

The kids were at Day Camp and I had a free afternoon ahead of me with no pressing work or house related jobs crowding my head space. I started down the familiar road to Dorts Cove anticipating a visit at my father's house or the beach; perhaps both.

I pulled into the driveway at my father's house and drove up behind the hill where the vehicles often hide when rain has not saturated the grass. No car, no truck, no people in sight.

I turned the car around on the hill and set off for the beach, just several 100 meters away.

As I drove in the beach road a familiar truck was perched on the edge of the bank looking out to sea, seaming to pull at an invisible leash that kept it tied to the shore. The truck was similar to almost every other truck in the community but the opened tailgate revealed a pair of rank black sneakers that I knew my father wore around the yard.

I parked the car and headed out across the rocks towards the mouth of the Salmon River where I could just vaguely spot a human figure.

The wind on the beach was brisk disguising the power of the sun as it poured buckets of radiation on me. The tide was high and what little sand peeked out between the rocks sparkled.

I walked up to the lone fisherman on the point who was standing in hip-waders in the river two or three feet deep. At first I wasn't sure if it was him; something didn't seem exactly right and I wasn't positive about the truck although I was pretty sure about the sneakers.

Normally I would have no doubt that it would be my father on the beach; the beach where he grew up, where his father and grandfather had grown up, where I had grown up and where now, my children were growing up. This beach is part of the family DNA. But my father's trips out to the beach were less frequent these days; his knees gave him a lot of trouble and the long walk over rough terrain was difficult if not sometimes impossible for him.

The fisherman looked up and sure enough it was my Da but with so much sunblock on his face that I barely recognized him under the white-wash. I didn't want to disturb my father, I guessed he had gone out to the beach, despite the trouble it may cause him, to be alone. I guessed that the beach acted as a sort of church for him as it did for me-- to either contemplate or forget the worries of the day.

I had come to see him on this day in the hopes of talking to him about his sister who had recently died. I had been away, attending to my grandmother's death and funeral in Massachusetts, when my aunt had died. I had returned on the day after my aunts' funeral.

Since I had been home my dad made some mention about the funeral but not much—I wondered if there was anything more he wanted to say. So here I was waiting to hear whatever might need to be said.

The death of my aunt surely struck my father hard. They were, as the saying goes, Irish twins, less than 12 months apart in age. She had been his playmate for his entire life. When I thought about her death I kept returning to a photograph I had once seen of them playing hide and seek around an apple tree when they were toddlers.

My aunt had been sick with cancer for several years but the end came quickly and unexpectedly. It was just four years ago that my grandmother died. None of us, at that time, would have believed it if we had been told that my aunt would die four years and one month later.

Now there is just my father and his youngest brother. Luckily they are friends, comrades, fishermen-in-arms. You can often find them casting out their lines at the Salmon River bridge located on the road between their two houses which are less than a mile apart.

So I waited for the conversation to start. But it didn't; at least not that one.

Da was fly fishing; hoping for a big trout. There was one already on the beach when I got there—past the point of playing the line, gills no longer trying to breathe in the unfamiliar atmosphere.

After a while a new fly needed to be tied and Da waded ashore. We talked about flys; none of them looked like anything we had ever seen in nature yet the fish went for them greedily. We sat, he tied the fly and the fish started to jump in the river diverting his attention from his knots. The more the fish jumped the harder it was to tie the fly. Finally he got back into the water and we kept an eye out for the fish who now seemed to jumping on the other side of the river.

The closest we got to talking about my aunt was when my father got up from the shoreline in an uncertain fashion—a little wonky in his waders. He said that was how it went when you were getting old then corrected himself and said, “when you are old.” He went on to tell me that his grandson Sam had recently told my father that he, Sam, could never think of Da as old. He was never an old man to Sam and that is a sentiment with which, most people that know my father, would agree.

My father has always been a woodsman, a fisherman, a man who always could and would do hard work. It's been very odd to think of him not being able to do things—for him and for me. The idea that my father is getting old is one I really can not square in my mind with the person that I know him to be and I think he has the same problem. Who is he if he is old? The death of his sister brought this question into sharper relief. A day on the river quietly thinking or not thinking about it; that's how we work these things out.

I stayed on the beach watching fish, birds and my father for several hours. The one thing in life I always want more of is time with my Da.

I started for home with a fish and fresh memories; a perfect afternoon.

Top five list

So I got this idea from a fellow blogger—top five list. However, I did not read all the directions properly before I started thinking about my top five list. Only after I had put together this solid top five during my morning run did I log in and check the link she provided and found that I was supposed to do specific top five lists like places I want to visit, books I have recently read, etc.

Well in keeping with my usual personality trait of just doing things my own way here is my top five list.

Top five things I don't regret that other people think I should

1 Being a single mother

2 Going to university to study the things I love rather than studying things that would make money

3Any and all love affairs

4 Moving back to my home town

5 Having no regrets

ONE

I can't say that I set out to be a single mother but I was not surprised when I became one. Somewhere in my head I never thought I could tolerate, compromise, or agree with another person long enough to raise children together.

When my second child was a few months old and my little family of three moved back to my home town, my grandmother, who I loved dearly, lamented the fact that I had this second child. Everything would have been easier if I was single with only one child she thought.

Gram might have been right in the short term; it was harder to work and make a living with two small children but in the long term she was very wrong. I can't imagine my child(ren) not having a sibling. To limit their life experience by making them a singleton would not have been beneficial. A sibling teaches you so much about relationships and how to live with others. I truly can't imagine how dull life would be without both of my children and I am thankful every time I can say, “Ask sissy to help you.”

TWO

From the time I was very young I loved anthropology. I made list from encyclopedias of cultural groups I should study and spent some time taking notes from encyclopedias and keeping them in a little scribbler. The different ways people do things fascinated me and still does.

In my first year of university I told myself that whichever class I got the higher grade, History or Anthropology, I would declare my major. Unfortunately, I got an A in History and a B+ in Anthropology. I decided rules were meant to be broken and majored in Anthropology.

After my first degree, I entered into the Kinesiology program at Dalhousie University. This was the “Be sensible, study something that will make money” educational opportunity. My first year was good; straight As and on the Deans List. But in my second year my personal life became messy and at the end of the second semester I flew off to Thailand and left all sensible options behind.

Several years later I started university again and entered a MA in Thai Studies. As I always say, a most practical subject.

So although there are no listings for anthropologists or experts on Thai culture in the Job Bank, my experience has led to employment and I am glad I made the choice to study what I loved not what was practical.

THREE

Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. That is a worn-out saying that I can get behind. Of all the men I have been involved with throughout my life, remembering the relationships we shared is usually a laughing matter; even if it takes several years to get to the laughing part after all the crying.

I am friends with most of my exes. I have chats with them on facebook and even sometimes visit them in other cities. It is my philosophy that if you can't say anything good about your ex, that really is saying something about you. So although not all my exs are great guys, most of them have a few redeeming qualities. Some of them are great and it really was just me and not you that messed things up.

FOUR

I moved back to my home town just over five years ago now. It was a big move. Most people didn't think I could handle it. My home town is a very small place-- maybe 400 people. Before returning here I had lived in some of the most densely populated places in Asia; Bangkok, Thailand and the north western tip of Taiwan in a few cities that felt like suburbs of Taipei.

More to the point, I was seen by many of my friends as a person in perpetual motion. According to their view of me, I would be unable to settle down and stay in one place. In the past, it is true enough to say that I lived short stints in different places but this was not a life plan I had devised for myself. My life was highly nomadic in my teen years due to my mother's inability to mentally adjust to stillness. On my own, in early adulthood, I lived in Halifax for seven years, then in Bangkok for almost eight years; Guysborough is small but I had lived in small places and I knew I could hack it. I didn't know I would like it as much as I do. That has been a great bonus.

I still want to travel and hope to venture further afield as the kids get older. As it is now I have my own house, have a job I like, have friends I can rely on and my kids live close to their grandparents. Everything has worked out better than I could have ever hoped or dreamed.

FIVE

No regrets. None. Nada. Nein. Nyet. Ok, truthfully, sometimes I regret eating too much ice cream.

So thank you Katie for getting me out of my post-less summer. Hope yours is truly magnificent.