Ho, Ho, Ho…Santa’s a Bully.

Well, another year has come and gone here at Meadowbrook View.  A lot has changed since I last blogged—new families, new faces,  new activities, new obstacles.

We’ve been pretty busy this holiday season with a return visit to Bart Harvey Senior Center for a holiday sing-a-long and cookie decorating with our elder friends. It’s always nice to be invited back to this community and see some familiar faces. It’s always nice to see the kids actively involved in positive things.

A new site we visited this year was Greenwood House. I really can’t get into too much detail with this particular site, but I will say the ladies at Greenwood really needed our company. Eagerly anticipating our arrival they had even prepared cookies and hot cocoa for the kids! Beside our usual routine, we were also delighted to have the vocal talents of one of our moms and our very own, Darnesha Weary! And I invited my friend, musician Nathan Olsen, to accompany our singing.

Seeing the radiant smiles from the women at Greenwood made it all the more worthwhile and it re-confirmed the importance of goodwill towards all and being of service in our community. Afterwards, I visited with some of the women as they gave me a tour of the house and talked about some of their life challenges. Their stories brought tears to my eyes.

*Sigh*

The thing is, while it sounds nice that my students went around singing holiday songs and spending time with those less fortunate, we’ve been having some serious problems. You see, just moments before each of these visits, we had issues with bullying.

Yes, that’s right. Bullying.

Here they are pretending to be nice to one another when in fact, that’s not the case at all. One of my girls was in tears because her own brother had been teasing the crap out of her and he even managed to get a few others to join the bandwagon. To make matters worse he along with another one of his buddies, sat laughing at my choir during our performance.

Both Darnesha and I (appalled and embarrassed) stopped the performance, reprimanded the boys, apologized to the elders and the choir, and started again.

Unfortunately, the damage was already done and it was impossible to get my kids out of the slump. They sang happy songs with long faces—what an oxymoron. It’s infuriating to see such disrespect and disregard.

More often than not this job wears me down. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and I care deeply for the kids, but these battles are constant and sometimes they never seem to let up. It’s tiresome and you begin to wonder if you’re making any impact at all. It seems that the good things last for a really short while and the bad stuff seems to linger.

I remember getting teased when I was a kid “Carla has a boyfriend! Na na na boo-boo.” But that was it.

Today, kids are brutal.

Bullying is a serious issue in our world and in the lives of our children. There’s a fine line with a harmless tease and seriously hurting someone’s feelings–to the point of something more drastic.

Kids today, don’t seem to get that. I mean seriously, my students and I have had heart to heart talks about this in the past, but it seems to be going in one ear and out the other.

I have to wonder if my students have any idea what they are truly doing to each other.

Once again, we spoke to them about it. If the look on their faces was any indication, all they heard was “blah, blah, blah kids…blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Where do we go from here?

When will this madness stop?

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