Bully: She told her son, ‘hit him hard’ –and she learned a lesson

On the occasion of the April 13 opening of the movie "Bully," a son teaches a mom a lesson: There were three bullies not one - the bully, the school principal, and mom herself.

|
Reuters
The movie "Bully" opens April 13. A mom told her son, "hit him hard"– but her son a taught her a lesson: There were three bullies not one - the bully, the school principal, and mom herself.

I told my son to hit him hard and fast.

“Aim for the nose,” I said. “It will make him cry. He’ll bleed -- a lot. Then hit him again. Harder. If you get in trouble with the school, don’t worry. You won’t be in trouble at home.”

My son always said no. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. It’s not who I am.”

Each day for endless months my son came home from seventh grade with stories about the boy. How he humiliated my son in front of the class with a clever putdown or a quick smack when the teacher turned her back. At first my son’s friends laughed it off. Then they turned primal and wouldn’t let him sit at their lunch table. I was enraged, my son was stunned and becoming glummer by the day. Hit him, I pleaded, wishing I could somehow inhabit my son’s body and do it myself. My son always said no.

“That’s not who I am,” he said. “You’re only making it worse.”

The turning point came one day in the locker room when the boy looked at my son as they changed and said, “I dreamed I [hurt] you.” [Editor's note: The original version of this quote was edited to remove a graphic description of the specific threat.]

I didn’t trust the principal to help and my son didn’t trust me; I called the police instead.

The officer showed up at the school, but the principal met him at the office. He told the cop it was his school, he would handle it. The principal called my son and the boy down to office over the public address system for the whole school to hear. Everything became instantly worse. When I found out, I called the principal.

He said he brought them into his office and told both of them to stop or else.

“If there are any more problems,” the principal said, “call me and I’ll take care of it.”

Months of fury and impotence and hurt that I couldn’t direct at the boy swelled within me. I was grateful there was a phone line between the principal and me, and not something so flimsy as a desk. “Why would I call you?” I said. “You’re useless to me.”

That night, the officer called my son and listened to him awhile. In the morning, he bypassed the principal and headed straight for my son’s class, taking a seat next to him and near the boy. He told the boy my son was his friend and he didn’t want anyone bothering him. The cop told the boy he could be his friend, too, but the boy didn’t say much of anything.

“After that,” my son said, “I asked him if he wanted to be partners in English.”

“Why?” I cried.

 “Mom,” said my son, “I heard he has problems at home. I couldn’t hurt him more than that. It’s not who I am. Don’t you understand?”

Finally, I did.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Bully: She told her son, ‘hit him hard’ –and she learned a lesson
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/0412/Bully-She-told-her-son-hit-him-hard-and-she-learned-a-lesson
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe