1.11.13 Adam LiteNews and Info

My 2 cents:

As a mother of a verbally bullied 11year old, the only thing I can do is try to build up my son's self esteem and try to make him feel that he is valued by those in his circle. It doesnt mattter who deserves the blame, or who SHOULD be the one to change. All parents can do is exactly what Adam was promoting.

If one can get passed the anger evoked by him saying the victims should change, then it can be seen that that change is not asigning fault but simply equiping the victims with coping skills. He didn't say that's all that needs to be done, but, realistically, that's all I got right now.

Kudos to Adam for addressing a sensitive subject that he has experience in. So very sorry to hear all your sad stories.

My usual response to something important re Adam on Atop is .... wait ... someone will say it just a little bit better .... and sometimes that does not happen.

Yep, happened, nonotme said it bautifully.

Additionally: twitter might have been the wrong medium, but that is how Adam communicates, so it is the most genuine way and I value it ...

Sharing an eye opener from the past:

Familiar with our guy...I'd forgotten the hoopla...

youtu.be/FZ22AbQ4GpI


8:28...heart breaker

I have been reading all of the bullying posts and Adam's tweets, head nodding here and there, heart tugged by all the individual experiences shared.

My youngest son is very short. At 23, he is 5' 5", and what height he has attained came late for him, as he was also genetically a late grower. This was hard for him from the beginning, and I'm sure it is still not always that easy for him now, even as an adult.

In third grade, he came home telling me that some guys were mean to him during PE on the field, forming a circle around him and not letting him break out of it. I was mad and asked him if he wanted me to go talk to the teacher/principal. I remember he looked at me with the wisest eight year old eyes, and said patiently, as if I were a well meaning but completely clueless dimwit, "No, Mom, I will take care of it myself." And then he did.

He was lucky to have a big personality and a natural sense of confidence that helped him get through having a fairly socially undesirable trait well enough. He is funny and gregarious and well liked, and in middle school, when people "ribbed " him all the time about being so short, he'd smile and laugh with them good naturedly, and then come home and express his real feelings with tears and frustration.

As parents, we listened sympathetically and agreed with him that people are mean sometimes, ignorant often, that pain sucks and that life isn't fair, and let him know we believed in his strength and in his ability to arm himself and make it through. It wasn't hard because we did. We reminded him often that we loved him and that we absolutely knew his worth. We tried to give him practical tools to cope by sharing what works for us.

My point is mentioning all this after hearing many of your more challenging experiences, is that over the holidays, my 23 year old son talked to me about how being short has given him some good things he probably wouldn't have had otherwise. He believes it has made him more resilient than some of his adult friends who always had it easy. He has developed a thick -ish skin, and that helps him be able to hear his movies or scripts critiqued. He feels it made him more empathetic and compassionate to the struggles of others, which enhances his personal relationships now and helps him develop characters with greater depth. He also grew up with a desire to prove to the world that he is a force, and that continues to fuel his drive and determination to push himself and achieve his best.

I don't think his strengths would be as great if he hadn't experienced opposition growing up, and I see that strength in those of you who have shared your stories.

Bullying encompasses so many different behaviors, and has so many different sets of circumstances and results, that discussing it collectively as if there is one single set of solutions to deal with it, or one type of experience that defines it, is off the mark.

As a teacher, I think about bullying often. It is a systemic problem. I teach values every day, try to promote self confidence by building skills that allow students to feel accomplished and try to create a culture of unity and respect in my classroom.

In America right now, there is a lot of emphasis in education on bullying, and that is good.

When my daughter was in school, and she learned at 7 about the childhood abuse hotline, she called it later that week after having a meltdown when we ordered a pizza with a topping she didn't like.

Some kids today call someone else a bully if they get in a normal teen fight and one says something that hurts the others feelings.

This was happening so frequently at my school that we just had an assembly to go over exactly what real bullying looks like. :/

Of course, that doesn't mean that we should stop talking about bullying.