My mornings not consisting of the same battles has enabled me to put my fishwife costume back in the box. Dare I say it, but I probably have stress levels at an all time low and I'm actually enjoying my children. That may sound horrible but as any parent with a child who has demands above and beyond the already high demands of a child probably knows, we love our kids to the moon and back but their daily challenges don't leave much room for us to just enjoy them being kids. I am getting to do that at the moment probably for the first time that I can remember. Long Legs actually talks to me in audible words and not just grunts!
Today I went to the Short One's school assembly. I used to be a weekly attender but this year I've just not felt so inclined. So today I went and much to his delight I actually stayed for the whole thing. I normally bolt before the class presentation at the end. This morning the presentation was by the senior class which Long Legs was in last year so I thought I'd stay and see what they were doing this year.
It turned out to be a mini play/musical with the theme of bullying. They introduced by explaining bullying can be verbal, physical, it can be a group of kids or it can be hidden. The play started out with the main character having no friends and nobody would even talk to him. He was called weird by all the other kids and the eyes without warning sprung a leak!
No amount of looking up the ceiling to inspect for cobwebs was stopping it so I just went with it and dabbed the eyes to stop the mascara running. I wished this presentation had been done the year before. My boy last year in senior, and probably all the years before that, just wanted to be liked, just wanted to have friends. He had a couple but the majority of children at primary probably just thought of him as nobody worth bothering with. Weird.
So that raw nerve we all have, got stung. Aside from the fact that we have had an issue with Long Legs being called names at his new school, I realised I was crying because I just wondered how much of this mini play was actually sinking in to these kids? How much did they realise that their behaviour and actions do matter? And I wondered, for all the talk of bullying being subtle and how much mental anguish it can cause, how much do teachers practise what they preach?
I was disappointed in the ending which was five other kids beating the main character up and I just thought, yep, all people are going to really take from this is that bullying has to be physical. It has to be extreme and seen before something is really done about it. Isn't that the epitome of ASD? People can't see it, they can't see the effects of having a brain work differently, so it's just not real. They can't see how other kids treat your child differently because of it and they can't see how that makes a child feel. Therefore, that subtle bullying carries on.
So meanwhile, Nigella has a chocolate cake recipe which I have promised to make the boys. I feel a large slice of comfort cake coming on for myself. Failing that, somebody send me a wet fish so I can slap myself out of this state I now find myself in. Til tomorrow x
No comments:
Post a Comment