Having read a post that resonated with me (a heavy-hearted parent writing about their middle-school daughter; it's a bit long: Clien (clien.net)), many things came to mind, so as someone currently working in the field I'm writing a short piece in the hope it might help. Not long ago, at a school where a college classmate of mine works, a girl jumped from a bridge — reading the post made me worried. But thinking about it, this site must have many parents of middle and high schoolers, and reading the comments I felt how different a parent's perspective is from a teacher's, and how hard that must be, so I'm writing this to aid understanding. This is less a solution than just my thoughts on today's problems, so you may well see things quite differently.
1. The difference in human relationships between the parents' generation and the children's generation
- This is a point that, in my view, many people rather overlook. In the past — for the parents here, or back when I was in school, if you grew up in a city — there were maybe ten classes per grade, with 30 to 40 students per class, right? So even in elementary school, the chance of your 'friends' overlapping year after year was greatly reduced. The people you met each year were all different. That's why, in our day, the process of meeting 'new people' was natural, and we had many more chances to practice it; these days that's not the case. Whether elementary or middle school, the pool of students overlaps a lot. The loss of practice opportunities this causes is a considerable factor. In a sense, providing chances to practice new relationships has become almost a required duty of parents. We're already adults so it's hard to grasp, but those children have only ever spent time with close friends, and recent cohorts tend to be quite immature at expressing their own intentions, reading facial expressions, and considering others — so within that current, meeting new people is truly a 'difficult task.' It can't help but be very different from our time. Even the COVID years these students went through play a part: having been cut off from face-to-face relationships at a crucial period, they find it all the harder.
2. The difference between the 'me' at school and the 'me' at home
Just as the countless members here have a 'me' at work that doesn't match the 'me' at home, your children too will mostly have a 'home,' a 'school,' and a 'me' that don't align. Because of that, inferring behavior at school based on the figure you see at home is often quite difficult. So who generally knows this information? The homeroom teachers — and the variance from teacher to teacher that this creates is something even I can do nothing about. You can only pray to meet a good teacher. Just as we differ, they too differ in their processes and methods of observation, so the information about a student can readily differ. 'Students' at school further split into two: the 'me in relation to teachers' and the 'me in relation to friends,' which again differ.
3. Reporting school violence over bullying / or recovery through counseling
Many in the comments urged reporting school violence, but once a school-violence report actually begins, the person who suffers most is very often the child. That's because the school-violence committee process itself, even if on the surface it's framed as inducing 'reconciliation,' in reality becomes a process of assigning responsibility, so everyone enters it carrying the thought 'who is to blame for this?' Naturally, then, someone — a student, a parent, or a teacher — becomes the 'target of responsibility,' right? Sadly, most reveal resistance to the very reason it was convened. So the reason some in-the-field commenters recommended transferring schools or counseling is that, the moment a school-violence hearing imposes compulsion on the other students, that child becomes 'the one who caused a problem,' creating yet another reason for bullying — which is why they couldn't recommend it.
This is probably a point where the parents and I largely differ. In a way it may be a difference of perspective. I don't think the view that, since there was bullying, the bullying must be punished, is wrong; but in the end the resolution of the problem is achieved not by the bullies being punished, but in the process of them letting go of their feelings, no longer bullying, and accepting the bullied student — so inflicting punishment, with students of that age, generally accomplishes little beyond provoking antagonism. Students who know that behavior is wrong don't do such 'bullying' in the first place, and students who don't properly recognize it tend to keep showing the view 'why should I be punished?'
So is recovery through counseling a 'permanent' and 'most effective' solution? No. I don't agree with that either. It's just that the time a parent can support a child's psychological and emotional state is 'time outside school,' so the student also needs someone within school to confide in and talk to, so that time at school is less hellish, right? That's why I recommend counseling. Through the process of opening one's heart to a new person, the student practices becoming comfortable with self-expression, and on the other hand makes at least one ally at school, coming to perceive it as a 'slightly' better place. So what role can parents play? After school hours, they must be the child's pillar of support.
So what do homeroom teachers usually do in this process? They tend to find a decent student and have a talk. In other words, they look for a 'student worth asking a favor of.' It's not only first-year middle schoolers; because this kind of bullying is frequent among girls all the way up to senior year of high school, teachers in charge of girls are generally 'aware' of these issues. Of course, as in the post above, there are cases where it's 'forgotten,' but there aren't many homeroom teachers who would simply pass over the words 'a particular student is having a very hard time because they're always alone.' (If you feel a teacher is continually just passing it over, I strongly recommend going through a meeting with the vice-principal or principal.) And what interested teachers can do is, in fact, only to find a decent friend. They look for friends who have the good heart that they should help a friend, who are considerate, and who believe bullying is wrong. Of course, there's also the point that the friend has to suit the taste of the 'bullied student.'
4. Whether they wear makeup / athletic ability / or various 'on-display' outstanding abilities like studying
It's hard to generalize about teenagers, but still, in middle school, being good at something — anything — is a way to avoid being looked down on among students. This was no different in my own era. It can be sports, or it can be studying. For boys it would be things like games or sports. Makeup is a similar domain. I've often seen cases where, if a student doesn't groom themselves at all, other students look down on them, and this is still common today. (Common doesn't mean we stand by; this is their culture, so it's not a domain easily fixed by intervening. It's the fault of us adults who made such a society, not theirs...)
So it helps to prepare, well in advance, 'one thing they're good at' that can build the child's self-esteem.
5. The process of identifying the ringleader
I don't oppose the process of collecting various materials and gathering evidence, but it's also not easy to succeed at. It's a structure in which parents find it hard to play an active role. Parents are people who don't attend lessons together and don't share school life together. On the other hand, if that role ends up falling to the 'bullied student,' the student loses the chance to grow closer to those students. Many parents say it doesn't matter since the others reject them anyway, but unless you change schools, rumors within that group usually circulate everywhere, so the process of gathering material often becomes a wound as well. In the end, the homeroom teacher must be on the parent's side to help much with this problem. So it's hard for me to call it a method that can easily succeed...
6. Is transferring schools the only way?
Transferring is the easiest method, while at the same time it's a method that leaves room for the problem to repeat. The reason it's easiest is that it creates, once again, a chance to build 'close friends.' But this too, if failure repeats, the fear of failure a student feels at that age is not small, so it can actually bring on more helplessness. If this collapses before trust in a new partner forms, things will be very hard afterward (in high school) too, right?
Children's conversational habits and their views on trusting people end up following their parents, so if parents are proactive and express their intentions logically, the children generally follow that tendency, and without such modeling from parents, the children generally don't escape the model they don't have. So, curiously enough, the language habits of parents who come to the school resemble the language habits of their children...
7. Please be sure to tend to your child's heart. But not with revenge...
The parent's line 'I'll solve everything' is, in fact, an impossible thing to say. By middle school, children know this now. They know parents can't solve everything. I know well that parents say such things because that's how their hearts feel, but in reality it's far from a process that actually helps solve the problem. What's actually needed are expressions in a somewhat lowered tone, like 'Were you okay? Wasn't it really hard? Let's find a way together, slowly,' rather than 'We'll somehow solve it.'
Even if, because of the bullying, your child looks outwardly shrunken, inside they're in an 'agitated state,' so if the parent isn't composed, the children too lose many chances to regain composure. Don't let go of this point; I recommend approaching again calmly. Many find this hard, but usually problems are solved not by getting worked up, but by calmly looking at the situation, right? Students generally have never experienced that process, so the 'parent' has to model it for them.
The writing got a bit scattered and long, but I hope it helps in any case... It's the middle of the night, so I'm feeling stifled too.
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