Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Got a phone call from O's school today, an "incident" happened on the school bus and apparently he got very upset. To the point that he said he wanted to set the school bus on fire and to slit his own throat with a pen knife. Of course he is not going to do any of those things, but the teacher got quite concerned and sent him to see the deputy principal.

It is upsetting, of course, to find out that my son was teased/bullied. Over something as trivial and mundane as wiping his bogies on his trousers. Which kid doesn't do that? Those no-brainers all went "yeeeeeewwww!!!! O is sooooo grosssss!!!! everyone loooook! Yeeeeeewwww!!", apparently. I accept the fact that school is a horrible place and school buses even worse, and it is to be expected that my kids will either be bullied or be bullies themselves at some point during their school careers. But the most upsetting thing for me is that O took it out on his little brother, who sat beside him, quietly, through all the taunting. I asked O why he did it? He said he couldn't hurt anyone else so he hurt his brother.

I gave them both a long lecture and tried to help them come up with strategies to deal with this kind of situations which no doubt will happen again.

"You should tell them to stop being so bleeping juvenille."

"But mum, they are so dumb they wouldn't know what juvenille means!"

"Yeah, tell them they mustn't try picking their noses like you did cos what little there is of their brains will get dug out in the process".

"Yeah, they are dumb."

"And they aren't well-trained like you."

"That's true."

"I love you, nose picker."

"I love you too, mother."

"Don't hurt your brother again. Not in front of other kids, anyway."

"Okay."

"He loves you."

"I know."

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