How Unknowing Parenting Choices Can Set Kids Up For Bullying: What I Learned From My Own Experience
I was folding laundry last week when I pulled my old middle school windbreaker out of the donation bin my 12-year-old stepdaughter left by the door. The cuffs are frayed, the brand logo is peeling off, and the hem’s an inch too short because it was my older cousin’s before it was mine. All of a sudden I was 13 again, standing in the gym locker room, while a group of girls pointed and laughed at the scuffed white sneakers I’d worn every day for two years because my mom said we couldn’t afford new ones.
I grew up with parents who believed deeply in not coddling kids. They thought giving into what “all the other kids” had spoiled character, that learning to go without built toughness, and that any problem a kid had at school was their problem to fix. When I came home crying in 7th grade saying kids were calling me four-eyes because my glasses prescription was two years out of date, my dad told me bullies only pick on people who let it bother them. When I asked for a $20 haircut with layers like all my friends had, my mom said long hair was natural and cutting it was a waste of money. When I told her kids were calling me “ragamuffin” because my hair was always tangled and split at the ends, she said I should be grateful to have hair at all.
By 8th grade, the teasing turned into pushing me into lockers, leaving mean notes in my backpack, and ignoring me when I tried to sit with anyone at lunch. I stopped eating in the cafeteria and hid in the library during lunch period every day. When I finally worked up the courage to tell my parents it was getting bad, they said I was overreacting, that I needed to stop being so sensitive, and that if I just acted like it didn’t bother me, it would stop. It took me until my late 20s in therapy to name the feeling I’d carried all that time: they didn’t just refuse to help. They set me up for it.
I don’t blame my parents, not really. They grew up poor in small towns, raised by parents who had even less, and the advice they followed was common back then. They genuinely thought they were preparing me for the real world, that I’d thank them one day for teaching me to be tough. But now that I’m helping raise my stepdaughter, I see how every small, unthinking choice they made made me an easy target. Bullies don’t pick on kids at random. They look for anyone who stands out in a small, easy-to-mock way, and they look for kids who don’t have a safety net to fall back on if they push back.
The first thing I do differently with my stepdaughter is I don’t force her to stand out unnecessarily for the sake of some principle. When she needed new sneakers for school last fall and asked for the same Vans half the kids in her grade wear, I didn’t buy her a $15 generic pair from the discount rack just to save $30. I got her the Vans. It’s not spoiling her, and it’s not giving in to peer pressure. It’s just not handing bullies a ready-made joke to use on her before the first day of class even starts. When she wanted bangs last year, I didn’t tell her they’d be a hassle or grow out wrong. I booked the $15 cut at the local salon. Kids who feel good about how they look stand up straighter, and bullies notice that.
The second thing I changed is how I respond when she comes home upset about teasing. The first thing out of my mouth is never “what did you do?” or “just ignore it.” I always start with, “That sounds terrible. I’d be hurt too.” Last month, she came home crying because a boy in her class called her ceramic braces dorky. I didn’t tell her he was just being a jerk and she should get over it. We sat on the couch together, looked up the neon rainbow rubber bands she’d been talking about for her braces, and ordered them that night. Then I asked her what she wanted to do next. Did she want me to email her teacher, or did she want to handle it on her own first? She said she wanted to tell the counselor, so we called her together after dinner.
A week later, that boy made the same comment again, and my stepdaughter told him, “That sucks and if you say it again I’m telling the principal.” He hasn’t said anything since. That’s the toughness my parents were talking about, but it never would have happened if I’d told her to just ignore it and handle it alone.
I still carry the habits my parents gave me. Even now, I catch myself downplaying when people are rude to me, because I learned not to rock the boat or complain. It’s something I still work on. I don’t hate my parents, they did the best they could with what they were taught. But I can see how easy it is for good parents to repeat the same patterns, following old advice that sounds right but doesn’t work. The mistake a lot of people make is thinking toughness is something you learn by being left alone to deal with bad things. It’s not. You learn toughness by knowing someone has your back first, so you can learn to have your own back later.
I tucked the old windbreaker back into the donation bin after I sat with it for ten minutes on the couch. I still don’t get everything right with my stepdaughter. There are days I’m tired, I say the wrong thing, I tell her to just shake it off when I shouldn’t. But last week, she came home from a birthday party and told me she stood up for a new girl who was getting picked on for her beat-up backpack. That’s the outcome I care about. We don’t get a do-over for what we went through, but we get to do things a little differently for the kids coming after us.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How Unknowing Parenting Choices Can Set Kids Up For Bullying: What I Learned From My Own Experience