As a mother of two young children, I'm always on the alert for what might happen to them. I'm an overprotective mother, and that's bad. My mother always tells me that children are too spoiled and that life will be hard if they don't learn boundaries now.
It's difficult for me, but I try. The instinct to protect them is strong, but I'm learning to be more rational.
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The media constantly bombards us with worrying messages about bullying, and it's hard to ignore them. Sometimes I wonder if we're creating a youth who can't tolerate failure, or worse, criticism. When I was a child, I suffered a lot of disappointment and belittlement, nothing serious. Now, when I hear some of the things that society considers serious, they never cease to amaze me, since they were completely normal.
The other day, my son came home from school and was acting a little strange. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me there was a boy he didn't get along with at all, but they don't like each other. I told him, "Well, it's okay, you can't like everyone. Who knows, maybe in time you'll become friends." That happened to me with some of my friends.
But my surprise wasn't that, but rather that his anger stemmed from the fact that the teacher forced him to hug her every day even though he didn't want to.
Of course, I went to school to file a formal complaint and told my son that if it happened again, he should tell me immediately.
It's one thing to prevent children from being bullied or hit, but from that to forcing them into relationships they don't want, there's a huge gap.