The Big Sister turns thirteen today. I'm so excited for her. I'm not the mom that cried at kindergarten or cries at these milestones, I'm genuinely excited for her.
Why won't they still let me dress them?
I do, however, get a sense of urgency.
I am keenly aware that, while I hope to always be a sounding board, my truly influential days are numbered. I'll never not be their momma, but ya know. There are so many things I want my girls to leave the nest with: good flossing habits, a healthy body image, a solid foundation of the Word, and knowing that their parents are flawed people in pursuit of Jesus. I want them to know how to cook some basic meals and keep a house and make it a home. I want them to know how to speak up for themselves, to call "Bull" when necessary, to know their worth, and to write notes. I want them to live well and love well, to value people over things.
So many things. So little time.
I have a general rule about making promises to my kids, I like to keep us all flexible, but for such an occasion, I thought I'd list thirteen promises I can be sure of today, tomorrow, and most days...
Grinning.
1. The more you know Truth, the more you'll recognize lies. Plaster your memory with the Word.
2. The issue that you have the hardest time with today will be the very thing that will bring forth your victory in Jesus. Your weakness is His strength. It's His specialty.
3. You will never regret being classy.
4. You will not immediately understand every decision I make over these next few years.
5. Most of your regrets will be the things you didn't do, rather than the things you did.
6. Jesus in you will always shine brighter than the lipstick on you.
7. It is possible to love your body and want to improve it. Be strong, healthy, and ready to GO when the Lord calls you!
8. Encouraging others (especially girls) doesn't mean that you are less than,
it means you are strong enough to lift them up. Be a cheerleader for your people.
9. The "second mile" is the best mile. Go the distance.
10. Your heart will lie to you. Your gut is usually right. The Word is always right.
11. Confidence is not the same as arrogance. Confidence is an attractive quality, wear it well.
12. When in doubt, overdress.
Cause, ya know, mud.
13. You can never out love me nor out sin me. This is not a challenge. Please don't try.
Happy birthday, Sister. I love you more than strawberries.
Bullying is never okay. Never. Ever. Let's get that straight from the get-go.
Here's the topic of today's discussion:
Little 9 year-old Grayson takes a liking to My Little Pony and carries a MLP lunchbox to school. Then, as expected (not saying right, just expected), he was picked on and bullied.
So, school officials saw the lunchbox as a distraction and asked him to discontinue using that lunchbox at school.
There are so many layers here.
I'm sure my southern, no-nonsense upbringing is rearing its head.
Mom is spot-on for backing her son. There are times when you just need to take things to a-whole-nother level just to show your kids you are on their team. In a few years, when he's fourteen and sure his momma is out to make his life miserable, she'll have this little episode in her back pocket to pull out. "'Member that time..."
Mom is also 100% correct in saying that it is "flawed logic" to say that "saying the lunchbox is a trigger for bullying is like saying a short skirt is a trigger for rape." Absolutely.
At the end of the day, I don't care if the boy wore a dadgum princess shirt to school, that doesn't give any one the right to put their hands on him. Ever.
Please, for the love of Tonka Trucks, let's not test this.
I can't completely blame administration, though. I don't know what steps the school administration had previously taken to curtail the bullying prior to asking Grayson not to bring the lunchbox to school. I would imagine the teachers and faculty really were looking out for his best interest. Let's just make this easy on everyone and skip the lunchbox. The teachers I know would have offered to buy him a new one to make his life less miserable! These are [likely] not mean-spirited people. Most teachers I know are just trying to go to work, make a living doing something they love and help raise up world-changers as best they can. I'm sure they never saw this hullabaloo coming. Still, he should not be punished for his lunchbox. Bullying should be dealt with to the fullest extent. Period.
Like I said, I don't know what steps the school administration took, but I'd like to know what was really the "distraction" here? The lunchbox or the bullying?
That said--I have two girls. No boys. Although, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have allowed my 9 year-old to take the lunchbox to school. I may have [theoretically] even used some very old school, non PC phrases to make my point about MLP being primarily for girls. I can't say for sure, but I feel like I would have nipped this jazz before it went this far. I can say for sure that Spouse would. I can't believe Mom didn't see this coming. This is on the tails of another North Carolina boy's attempted suicide for being bullied for almost the same thing!
When Big Sister was headed to second grade, Nana got her a really cool pencil box that had a light-up star on it. Although her teacher requested a pencil box on the supply list, I knew that a light-up pencil box in second grade could be a distraction for little girls. She was in no danger of being bullied over this box, but I know how simple things become a distraction in elementary school. I made it clear to Big Sister that the box can't cause any problems and then her teacher said it was fine with her until it caused a problem. *Grin* It was never not fine. The pencil box survived second grade. The point is, as parents, we need to have the forethought that our kids won't have. Understand that it's not always about triggering bullies, it's about triggering distractions.
This was not the Sister's classroom. She needed to respect it as her teacher's classroom and her teacher doesn't need any distractions.
The school is not My Little Pony's World, nor is the real world, and kids need to know that.
Not everybody learns to be friendly at the end of the story.
Another story. One of my favorite man-children (he'll be fifteen in a few days) was into a lot of pink when he was a wee one. He liked the pink Teletubbie, the Pink Power Ranger, and had a pink GameBoy. He was about 4. It drove his daddy nuts. But, they let him do it and it was good parenting. Because they knew [hoped] he'd outgrow it. (Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's what we were all going for at the time.) He did and he's very masculine today. However, I know that I know that I know, that at 9 years-old, scar this child as it may, that he would NOT have taken a pink Teletubbie lunchbox to school! Again, I call that good parenting. Now, at fifteen, this kid could rock a pink anything. Cause Real Men Wear Pink, right? Incidentally, we inherited the Pink GameBoy later on. :)
Now, I have discussed Grayson's story with my girls. I am not, as I said, advocating bullying by any stretch of the imagination. The discussion with my girls was about loving people, period.
I do, however, think that this whole thing could have been avoided at the kitchen table at home. This comes down to parental discernment. And, I don't know, maybe it's a hill worth dying on for this mom.
