One of the worst things about parenting, I’ve been told, is that you’re responsible for everything they do, but have no control over any of it.
My observations as a parent have indicated that this is true. It’s absolutely true. You are held responsible for all the trouble your kids get into, and you can’t keep them from doing stupid shit when you’re not around to smack the stupid out of them; however, think about it from the kid’s perspective. You’re told, from day one, that all of your actions and choices reflect on your parents, but you’re shoved into a small room with twenty-five others the same calendar age as you, but with mental and emotional ages anywhere from two years older than calendar age, to four years younger. You have, perhaps, one or two peers—children your age, your maturity level, and your ability level—with whom you get along.
And there’s one adult who plays favorites at the head of the room. Their favorites are cosseted, rewarded, never disciplined if they misbehave.
The funny thing is that the pets are almost always girls.
And the pets, by and large, despise everyone that isn’t one of the favored few. And they target those. They bully, they tattle, they cry-bully—oh, he/she hurt my feelings by saying/doing something I don’t like! Make them stop!
And the pets’ targets? Frequently boys, but they’ll also target girls who befriend their designated target. The point is to try to get the girls to abandon the friendship, to isolate their target, and either drive them out entirely, or keep them in trouble.
Sometimes, they manage to get one of the girls that are friends with the target to turn on them, to tattle something said in confidence expressing frustration that gets twisted into a threat.
(Somehow, though, the pets’ threats are never more than a joke...and never get the same disciplinary action.)
Is it any wonder that schools are deemed torture chambers by some of the kids?
I’m not posing hypotheticals. One of my kids is a designated target. Another has faced bullying to break a friendship with a designated target.
My kids are in private school.
I grew up in public school, where the bullying was a lot more overt, and physical. I have to admit I missed the signs of the bullying my kids were facing because it’s not the same. It’s not open. It’s girl-bullying. All of it. Seraglio politics-type bullying, where the target’s isolated, emotionally targeted, and when they react, the bullies—yes, I said it—work to fully ruin the target: the victims’ reputation is targeted, and the bullies try to get things put on a permanent record.
And nobody halts it because it’s not bullying bullying. I mean, nobody’s hurt, right? And we act on threats, right?
Wrong. My son’s been sexually harassed in ways that’d get a boy bounced—did get a boy bounced, even when it was a prank on a girl whose pants were too low rise and exposing her butt crack, and the boy had no interest in the girl at all.* They push, and they demand attention (well, he’s a child of proud gen-X parents; they don’t normally like the attention they get from him). He’s tried being kind, tried being blunt, tried telling them he’s Ace...nothing works to make them back off, except for cruelty and insults...which gets him in trouble. But not the girls who started it.
Has he reported the harassment? He says he has; the official response is “oh, they like you! You should be flattered!”
He’s not flattered. He’s annoyed, he’s frustrated, he’s grossed out, and this has pushed him so far into being asexual that I’m not sure he’s going to come back out again. And it’s because the school allows behavior from the girls that they absolutely would not allow from the boys.
My son’s had bomb threats made against his house.
Has he reported the behavior? He says he has.** And nobody did anything. Oh, the bomb threats were jokes. Girls wouldn’t actually go through with that.
(I beg people to do some fucking research on the political terrorism of the ‘70s, and who the terrorists setting bombs were.)
But the instant my son makes jokes about Call of Duty letting him vent, and if he were to go on a spree, the girls targeting him would be at the top of the list? Oh, that’s a threat.***
So, he was suspended. For finals week. And the following school year.
(But they let him make up finals week after all the other students are gone from the building.)
And here’s the kicker. If you’ll notice, I haven’t named/shamed the school. There are some reasons for that. First, it’s against the rules to badmouth the school on social media. And my daughter’s got friends there, and is doing incredibly well (4.0 GPA), in ways my son just...isn’t. I don’t want this blowing back on her.
Second, I also don’t want this blowing back on him. I’ve been...not quite threatened. See, they could have called the police, y’see. And if they were a public school, they’d have had to. I’m not naming and shaming, even though they’ve suspended him now for the next school year. Not expelled, just suspended for the ‘26-‘27 school year.
As if that’s not the same as expulsion. He’s going to be eighteen in October. He’s going into Junior year...and that’s what he’d be suspended for all of. He’d only go back for his senior year, and, at this point, I’m inclined to finish him out with homeschool with a GED and the tech certs.
And even with
all the bullying he faced,
the anxiety and the difficulties caused by being a smart, ADHD boy in
a girl-centric environment, all of that is better than what he’d
have faced
in standard classes at the local public school. Even if his grades
would’ve
jumped
probably by three letters.
Honestly, another reason I'm not naming and shaming is because, when I challenged the superintendent on different standards of punishment for boys and girls, he claimed he'd never heard about Imp's issues, and was not happy, and would be investigating. I couldn't tell you whether the principal knew or not, considering he'd been on his way out the door. This year, the superintendent and the managing director of the school's tech programs will be splitting the duties while they look for another, so I doubt this will get swept under the rug.
But with all of the above happening in mid-May, I've been bouncing around like an unprogrammed Roomba, trying to figure out how to keep Imp's spot in the trade school and figuring out what I'm going to end up teaching him next year. And how. I mean, I can do economics (thank you, Dr. Sowell, for your magnificent book), science, and language/literature; Other Half can do History, and we can split government. However. I seriously don't have any idea how I'm going to manage any higher maths when I only barely managed Algebra. And I'm not certain what math program he needs--Algebra 2, or something else--to mesh with the program he'll be going into (Advanced Manufacturing).
So, there you have it: the biggest reason why I don't have anything quite ready for publication, even though it's freakin' July, and the last thing I had out was in March.
*Kid
dropped a pencil down her exposed crack. Expelled for “sexual
harassment.” Even though
the kid had no interest in that girl, and a noted impulse problem
with dropping pencils down cracks...just mostly through vents, or air
returns, rather than clothing-exposed body parts.
**Reporting
is done via email to an account that the office help has access to.
One of the ringleaders is office help. Because the principal is
frequently not in his office, and sometimes can’t be found at all
for reporting in person.
***Further
info: the joke was made during a history presentation. The teacher
didn’t report it as a threat. A girl he thought he was friends
with reported it over a week
later, when she got mad at
him. He’d gotten up to
throw something away, and she’d taken his seat. School
student-culture’s
unspoken rules expect them to
find an empty seat somewhere else, and be quiet; he absolutely wasn’t
willing to get in trouble by sitting somewhere other than his
assigned seat, as he would have done.
