I just read a story on Canoe.ca about a 13-year-old girl in Calgary who, her mother feels, was driven to hang herself because of bullies. And yet the mom isn't angry with those kids.
She is quoted in the article saying being angry is "too heavy of a feeling."
Lynda Cook, the 13-year-old, had a friend who also endured bullying but chose to go on with life. However her hope for the future suffered a serious setback when Lynda killed herself after listening to insults and name-calling on a school bus ride home.
Sticks and stones? Some kids, no - most people - don't have thick enough skin to deal with daily barbs and self-esteem blows handed to them from their "peers."
The journalist in me is keeping me from ranting. The mother in me is telling me to change the world by starting with my own kids.
I can't make other parents take accountability for their actions and raise kids who have respect for one another, who don't judge other kids because of how they dress or how fat or skinny they are or what skin colour they have.
Kids learn by example. If they see their parents yell and swear and insult eachother or other people, that's what they see as normal. It's OK to do that to other people.
Or maybe those bullies were being abused at home and their way of taking control of their lives was to lash out at a weaker person.
All I know is that, as a mom, my heart breaks for Lynda's mom. Because she didn't see the signs, because she has to live and her daughter isn't, because last week was the last Mother's Day she will ever have with Lynda.
I'm sick of these bullying stories in the news. I'm tired of having to mourn for families I have never even met. I empathize with each and every parent who loses a child - not because I have endured the same pain - because I am a parent. Because the thought of seeing my kids suffer at the hands of a bully makes me see red.
Sticks and stones? Knowledge is the real power.
Click here to read the story on Canoe.ca
Tamara Plant
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