My kid asked “Will I get bullied for being a quokka, pufferfish, or duck?” What I learned as a teacher and mom
The half-eaten peanut butter sandwich was sweating through its wax paper on our kitchen table, glitter glue was sticking to the sole of my sock, and my 10-year-old Mia looked up from cutting up an inflatable pool noodle and asked, plain and simple: “Will I get bullied for being a quokka, pufferfish, or duck?”
It was spirit week at her elementary school, theme day “Dress as Your Spirit Animal.” Every other kid Mia knew had locked in their pick weeks ago: dragon, wolf, Taylor Swift (okay, that one’s not an animal, but I’ve learned not to question spirit week rules). Mia had spent three nights tinkering with this trio, and it made perfect sense to her: quokka for the days she’s quiet and happy just sitting and watching people, pufferfish for the days she gets all tight and mad when the math worksheet is too hard, duck for the days she waddles around messing up everything and doesn’t care enough to fix it. “One spirit animal doesn’t fit,” she’d told me three days prior, and I’d agreed. But now the worry was out. Her friend Lila had laughed after school and said it was “dumb to bring three animals when everyone else brings one.”
I’m a 4th grade teacher myself, so I’ve sat through more than my share of conversations about kid worries and teasing. I still almost blurted the useless line we all reach for first: “Don’t worry, no one will bully you.” But I caught myself. I still remember being 10, dressing as a No. 2 pencil for Halloween, and getting teased so bad I hid in the bathroom for 20 minutes of the class party. Empty reassurance doesn’t fix anything. If I promised no one would say anything mean, and someone did, Mia would leave thinking either I was wrong, or she was wrong for worrying.
Instead, I pushed the sandwich aside and pulled out a chair across from her. “What do you think might happen?” I asked. She shrugged and said most kids would probably not care, but someone might say something stupid. I agreed with her. That’s the truth, after all: most of the time, kids are too busy thinking about their own costumes to care much about yours. But sometimes, someone will say something rude, just because it’s different.
We spent 10 minutes running through what she could say if that happened. No big speeches, no fighting, just short lines she could remember. If someone asks what you are, you tell them what you told me. If someone says it’s weird, you say “It fits me better than one, that’s why” and then go join your friends by the slide. If someone keeps bugging you, you find your teacher or me right away. We practiced it once, me being the mean kid, her saying the line. It was awkward, she laughed through it, but it stuck.
Then I sent a quick two-sentence email to her teacher that night: “Mia’s doing a three-animal spirit costume for Friday, she’s a little nervous about teasing, just wanted to give you a heads up if you have a second to keep an eye out.” A lot of parents worry this makes them overbearing, but I’ve been on the receiving end of these emails, and it’s never a hassle. It just gives you context, instead of noticing a kid looking upset and not knowing why. It takes 30 seconds to write, no big deal.
Friday morning came, and Mia’s costume was held together with more safety pins than fabric. The quokka pouch made out of brown felt slipped off one hip, the pufferfish frills she glued to the back of her hoodie were already peeling, and she’d worn her yellow rain boots for duck feet, even though it was 60 degrees out. She walked into the playground holding my hand for half a step, then let go. A boy from her class yelled across the blacktop “What are you supposed to be?” and Mia stood up straight and said “I’m a quokka, pufferfish, and duck. Three spirit animals.” He nodded and said “That’s sick, I’m a zombie T-Rex” and ran off to line up.
By the time I picked her up that afternoon, she was talking a mile a minute. Three kids had asked her to explain why she picked each animal during recess, and she’d given a whole little talk leaning against the monkey bars. One girl did mumble that it was weird under her breath, and Mia heard her. “I just shrugged,” she told me, crunching on a goldfish cracker in the backseat. “It’s not like her opinion matters.”
This isn’t a story about how being different is always awesome and everyone loves you. It’s just a small, ordinary week in the life of a 10-year-old. But I’ve been thinking about that question she asked me, because it’s not really about quokkas or pufferfish or ducks. It’s the same question kids ask in a hundred different ways: Will I get made fun of for liking the wrong thing? For being bad at the stuff everyone else is good at? For having big puffy moods some days and quiet days other days? Will it be safe to be all of me here?
The biggest thing I took away from this is that we don’t have to have the perfect answer. We don’t have to make them change their thing to fit in, and we don’t have to promise it’ll be okay. What we can do is small, concrete stuff: let them keep their weird, perfect idea, spend 10 minutes practicing what to say if someone is rude, give the teacher a quick heads up, and then step back and let them live it.
I’ve seen too many parents rush to talk their kid out of an unusual choice just to avoid the chance of teasing. That sends a message that their truth isn’t worth defending, before anyone even says a word. Empty reassurance doesn’t help either, because kids know when you’re not telling them the whole truth. The worst thing that happened to Mia was one offhand comment, and she handled it on her own. The best thing was getting to show up to school as exactly the person she is that week.
Last night, Mia pinned the peeling pufferfish frill to her bulletin board, next to her collection of smooth river rocks and a crayon drawing of our cat. She said she’d do it again, even if someone did tease her. There’s no way to guarantee that kids won’t get bullied for being themselves, not ever. But what we can give them is practice standing there, safety pins and rain boots and all, knowing we’re right there if they need us. It’s not a perfect fix, but it’s enough more often than not.
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