Dear Lindsey62:

“I hope it’s ok to be honest“- of course it’s okay to be honest, thank you for being honest!

“Referring back to the other thread, I was concerned that B was told that her parents might be weak. We don’t know the full situation of other people” – I base my replies to a member on what the member shares. I put a lot of work and time reading what a member shares, re-reading it, re-typing it in my way, and coming to my best understanding for the time being. Every time I receive new information from a member, I re-read the old information and integrate the old and the new, to form an improved understanding.

“Also, people can be grieving. It is hard to be told that, which might not be correct, when a parent has just died” – I was aware that B lost her father not long before she started her thread, but I was also aware that her focus, right from her original post and onward, was not her father and his death, but the woman who bullied her since B was 6 years old.

She focused on the bullying topic, and I focused on what she focused on. I believe that the parents of both sides of the bullying (the bully’s parents and the parents of the bullied), are very relevant to the topic of school bullying. Teachers and school personnel are relevant as well, of course.  When a 6-year-old bullies another 6-year-old, and continues to bully her uninterrupted for 10 years, the parents/ adults in the situation need to be looked at.

“I think it felt to her as if the bullying was being put on her shoulders and that her parents let her down. Perhaps that’s why the thread was deleted” – there were contradictions and changes in B’s story as her thread progressed: In her original post, B didn’t tell her parents, later she told her parents. In an earlier post, her parents didn’t do anything about the bullying, in a later post- they did. In an early post, the Bully was an angel to everyone and all the girls in school liked her, in a later post, the Bully was arrogant in high school and almost all the girls disliked her. Currently (both women are in their mid-twenties), the bully is again an angle to everyone, and everyone likes her.

I posted to B about these contradictions and changes in the story, and she responded, saying “it hurts deeply to suggest that I am exaggerating her bad behaviour simply because I failed to provide a clear timeline of the events“.

I felt badly about B feeling hurt. In the next two posts, I expressed to her how much I appreciate her being tactful and kind to me even though she was deeply hurt by my suggestions. She responded kindly, but the day after, she deleted her thread. I decided to start this new thread on the topic of School Bullying because I felt badly about her deleting her own thread, feeling that I failed her, and I wanted to do something in the right direction, which is to acknowledge the topic of School Bullying and develop it. I thought that maybe this thread will help others who suffer or have suffered from this common type of bullying.

I was also thinking that maybe B will be reading this, and that she might feel that her topic was not forgotten or dismissed. Maybe she will even post here.

anita

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