As my pregnancy grounded me at home I became a fan of morning tv. I have my favourites on This Morning and Loose Women, sometimes I even get annoyed with subjects or people they interview, and today both shows took on a thing that makes me very angry – bullies. I want to put here the link to This Morning, because I believe, that everybody should here what this mother has to say, the mother who lost her son, because of bulling. Very often children don’t realize what they are doing, how cruel they are, but if the worst happen, they will have to live with this thought – he killed himself because I bullied him. That’s why I want YOU PARERNT OF BULLING CHILD, AND YOU PARENT OF BULLIED CHILD to listen to this woman, and read my story as well, don’t ignore it, help your child.
First, I will tell you about myself and my son. I never thought that I were bullied, until my oldest son was. I were fat child with crossed eyes, and horrible glasses. Children were laughing at me, but in our school I had popular older sister, that would always defend me. But I couldn’t defend myself, my self confidence was destroyed. I learned to not pay attention to people, I’d rather sit alone and read books then talk to people. My mum wasn’t very helpful, for her I was perfect because I had good notes at school, and quiet child can’t be naughty. Even when I stopped wearing glasses, and had a straight eyes I couldn’t see that I am pretty. I always found myself being fat and ugly. Eventually as an adult I learned where my voice comes from, and was able to stand up for myself.
And here it comes, my childhood demon came back to me. When my son came back home one summer day, and said that he was attacked by other boy. I knew that I have to defend him, but I didn’t know how, especially because it meant I would have to speak English. But, from the beginning. I would never think, that it can happen to my son. Ten years old, handsome, top marks at school, sporty, popular. Children like this don’t get bullied. He told me once, that kids are laughing as he’s got very big ears. As his mother, I never seen anything wrong in his ears, but that’s because our children are always perfect to us. That scared me, but he wasn’t really bothered, he found this funny. At the end of year 5 boys discovered word “gay”, and everything for them was “gay”, but there was one boy, that really had it in for Oliwer. Always found a moment to make a laugh from him in front of others. I noticed that my son’s confidence is going down, I told Paul, his step dad. He is very good in banter, he taught Oliwer some clever answers, and this finished bulling very quick. I had my happy boy back. Not for long… Summer holidays came. He would be out with his friends on their bikes all day. One day I noticed they spend more time at home every day. The shock came, when Oli came back home with tears in his eyes, and I had a text message from friend, saying that she had seen Oliwer being attacked by other boy, and if I want to call police, she can say what she saw. Me and Paul started talking to him. It turned out that there is a boy, same age as my son, that keeps on attacking him and his friends. He hit Oliwer in his ribs, tried to steal his bike, and scared him, that if Oliwer try to fight back, he will make his older brother take care of Oliwer. My son changed in minutes. Wouldn’t come out the house, constantly was checking if I’m home. I couldn’t go to the garden without telling him first that I am there. When school started he begged me to start picking him up after school, because he was scared to meet this boy on the way home. Paul decided, that we have to talk to this boy parents. But that was useless. The mother of this boy laughed at us. When I said that her son tried to steal Oliwer’s bike, she answered, that “that’s what children do”. All we heard is you don’t know who I am, who my brother and my partner are, you will regret coming here, you are nothing. They were shouting, we ended up shouting. The biggest problem was, that Oliwer saw it, and it made it all even worse, because if his parents can’t do anything about it, who can?
Our only luck was, that Oliwer wasn’t the only one who had problems with this boy. Four other polish mums from our school went with me to talk about it to headteacher. Unfortunately in a case like this, school won’t deal with it, because bulling is happening after school, and this boy is not a pupil in there. They referred us to community police. Community police couldn’t do anything neither, because Ted the bully was only 10 years old. He is a child, and the law wants to give child a chance. They would only go to his house and talk to his parents. And Ted was doing something more horrible every time. Once he pushed a boy on the ground and kicked him a few times in the head. Another time he grabbed a younger boy and threw him on the edge of a public path, the boy fell on his face and had to go to hospital for a check. Every time people were calling community police, in the end Ted had to sign a document of justice ( I can’t remember it’s real name), which mean that if he does anything again he will be put on the young offenders list, and can be taken to young offenders home.
Since this happen, we didn’t hear about any problems with this boy. Our problems weren’t finished though. Oliwer was still scared. School didn’t see this, because he was happy as always in there. This was the thing, if he had an adult somewhere around him, he was ok. But he couldn’t be left on his own for a minute, he started having panic attacks. Once Paul stood in our front garden talking to our neighbour, when he heard a scream. Oliwer went out of his room and saw that there’s nobody inside the house. Sat down on the stairs, screaming like mad, because he was scared. We called Children Mental Health Centre for help, and we found out that school has to refer Oliwer to have a talk to them. We asked his teacher for help, she promised they would do that, and they never did.
Now the nightmare is finished, but only because Oliwer decided that it can’t be like this. First started going out for short time, close to our house. Then longer, and I must say that a Pokemon Go game was helpful in here. His friends from school, that he plays on his PS4 with were playing this, and Oliwer started, so they would meet on weekends somewhere around, just to walk and try to find Pokemons. I know it’s not the best way to deal with things, but if it works, I’ll take it.
At the moment Oliwer is in secondary school, which he likes a lot, there isn’t any problems. All I want to ask you parent is to not ignore any sign of bulling in your child life, even if it’s to big ears, because in their age everything can grow to a tragedy.
IF YOU COULDN’T BE ASKED TO READ THIS VERY LONG POST PLEASE AT LEAST WATCH THIS
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