Yesterday at work I got a call from Sparrow. Some kids at the Boy's and Girl's Club were picking on brother and he was very upset.
I did all I could from work. "Let the staff know and we can talk about it when I get home. He can call me if he needs to talk. Have him talk to staff."
Heart in my stomach I knew what it was about. What it is always about. My boy has long, curly, white blonde hair. He has been teased about it since he was about 2-years-old. Even by family, though those were directed at me with a "When are you gonna cut that boy's hair?" type comment.
A friend of mine is a native, and his son is Little Willow's age. A couple of kids at the school came up behind him and cut his hair. Dude saw red. Understandably.
The school had a native teacher come in and talk about their culture and the significance of long hair on both their men and women. In that case, the school did well.
But that was the rare case. More often, schools and staff are failing to address the root of the problems. Where are these kids learning these behaviors in the first place?
Inari does not have a cultural significance for his choice to let his hair grow. He just likes it that way. And why shouldn't he? His hair is beautiful!
Men have been raised to treat their masculinity as this fragile thing that must be protected from femenine stereotypes at all costs.
Part of my heretical, crunchy-mama raising of my trio calls bullshit on that. I grew up unallowed to express unpleasant emotion. I was not "allowed" to be angry, upset "overly emotional" or sad.
I give my kids free reign to feel. To have emotions and talk about them and what causes them. Inari has grown up to his sweet 9-year-old self "allowed" to know and feel compassion and love and joy. He has been "allowed" to cry when he is happy as well as when he is sad.
He is good and sweet and kind and will go out of his way to help others. I have seen him race over to help another kid that has fallen. He will chase litter across a parking lot to make sure it gets in a bin. At 5-years-old it was Inari's compassion that started our vegetarian journey.
He is legitimately the epitome of a good person. I've been admitting since he was tiny that he's a better person than I am.
Even with that upbringing he has taken a lot of cues from the public school this past year.
When those kids started pelting him and singling him out and leaving welts on him in 3-step, he said something. Demanded they stop. But even with red welts on his face he didn't cry. They proceeded and started in with calling him a girl. He's "weird" for his long hair.
He shut down, stopped talking and isolated himself instead of retaliating against these bigger, older kids. That's when sister Sparrow called me.
He's such a brave child. My inner mama bear wants to find each and every one of these kids and smack their parents. Because fun fact: I do not hit my kids and I do not advocate other people hitting their kids. BUT the adults that are raising these little tyrant monsters deserve a good smack to wake them up a bit.
Take a good look at your family dynamics. Are you raising your kid with views that will make him or her feel entitled to bully others? Is your little boy going to run out and relentlessly call another little boy a girl because you taught them that boys must have short hair?
Have you taught your kid that only girls play with dolls? That girls can't play in the mud and get their nice clothes dirty? That they are better than anyone else because of a physical attribute?
Yes to any of those? Than congratulations, you are part of the problem. You are part of the bullying epidemic.