How to deal with bullies

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!


Today's lesson was much different than most of our unschooling lessons are.  My son learned how to deal with a bully.  Since we do homeschool, this is not a common occurrence like it may be if he were to go to a private or public school where the student to teacher ratio is a bit skewed.  Bullying could happen daily in a school environment.  So luckily for my son, it does not happen daily, but it does still happen.  One thing that is very different with homeschool than sending a child to school is that they have a tendency to have friends of all ages rather than same age peers.  This concept took me a while to get used to and I remember pushing for a same age peer group for my little boy initially because it just seemed like that would be the norm, but after doing this for three years, I have become very relaxed with my child's friendships and just let them happen naturally and he has some friends who are a couple years younger than him, his age and several years older and personality is key rather than age.  If his personality cliques with another child, they become friends and they are not concerned with age.


We went to the local science museum today for a homeschool class that we go to on a monthly basis.  My son was playing with one of his friends who is 10 years old while my son is just 7 years old and some other homeschool kids told my son he was a baby and he should not be playing with the older children.  This broke my son's heart because he loves playing with his friends and he sees them regularly and has good relationships with them.  He held his hurt inside though, did not respond and went to his class and then felt like he was being left out in his class and like everyone was picking on him.  When I went to pick him up from his class, he almost ran out of the room and then when we got into the car, he just burst into tears.  He said that he never wanted to go back to the science museum again and this is normally something he enjoys because he loves science and he usually loves being around the other children.  Little boys are always nominating him to be their best friend because he has such a laid back disposition and a sweet personality, so this was very unlike him.  I asked him to explain and he told me the story and what happened to him and how it made him feel.  I told him I would need to think about this for a few minutes to help him appropriately.  I also promised him cuddle time when we got home.

So when we got home, we came up with a plan.  If this happened again, instead of walking away and feeling hurt, he would respond with, 'it is not nice to call people names and I am not a baby, babies are under 2 years old and I am 7.  Don't ever call me a baby again, you were wrong to do that'.  I then went on to explain to him that the only reason someone would call him a name and try to leave him out is if they did not feel good about themselves and they try to make other people look bad to  improve how they feel about themselves, but in reality, they are really insecure and sad.  So this was not a personal attack against him, but instead just their way of dealing with their own problems.  After telling him this, we cuddled for a while and he seemed much better. What was breaking his heart was that he was being told not to be friends with someone for a shallow reason and he looked to this person as having some type of authority over him when in reality they did not have any.


So this was lesson #1 on how to deal with a bully.  There are many people around who are not kind and confident and gentle, so I'm sure it will not be the last lesson on how to deal with bullies.  I'm glad that this is rare and bullying is not the norm with homeschool events, but I am also glad it happens occasionally because it helps teach my son how to get along with all types and not everyone is going to be a moral, kind individual who is always looking out for him and trying to help care for him.  It is unfortunate, but everyone in the world is not good.  My son is already aware of this, of course, but this helped him have experience with it and we came up with a plan together on a better way to handle it in the future so that he does not internalize it and make himself upset.  It also helped him gain some insight of why someone would be this way.  Human nature can often be one of the most challenging lessons.  I am glad my son had the opportunity to learn more about this today.  If it happens again, he will have the tools to better deal with the situation and he gained confidence in himself too.