Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you.
“Words hurt Mom.”
Cuts and bruises will heal but hurtful words are a whole lot harder to heal, if not impossible.
Somebody hurt my daughter today.  No, they didn’t get into a fight with her.  They didn’t hit her with a stick or throw a stone at her.  They didn’t cut her with a knife and they didn’t shoot her.  They made fun of her.
My daughter is a lot like me.  She has a lot of energy and always seems to be happy.  She could probably be called goofy but I like to call it passion.  She is sweet and kind, to everybody.  She’s not perfect.  No one is perfect.  But she is a joy to be around, for everyone.
But some boy said something to her that I don’t want to repeat here.  And everyone in her classroom, except her friends, laughed.  They got a good laugh out of it.  I’m glad.  Because she cried for the rest of the day.  She shut down.  She did not participate in the day.  And she cried.
The school has a new buzzword that they like to use for this:  bullying.  They have a zero bullying policy.  But did they do anything to the kid?  No.  They didn’t hear it.
I am the type of mother who wants to beat the pulp out of this kid.  But I have always believed that my kids have to take up for themselves, that if their Mom came in and fought their battles for them that they would never learn how to stand up for themselves.  So I prefer to encourage my kids and make suggestions on how to handle something like that.
“Why don’t you tell him that he might be right but you can change and he’s ugly and you can’t fix ugly.”
“It doesn’t work Mom.”
“Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you.”
“Words hurt Mom.”
I know they do.  I can remember back to when I was in middle school.  I had classmates who hurt my feelings.  I had classmates that “bullied” me.  I repeated the sticks & stones mantra to myself over and over again.  Forty years later I still remember what they said to me.  Forty years later I wish that I had had a great comeback all those years ago.
I do believe that we have to help our kids develop thick skins.  I do think we need to bust those who “bully” us and our kids.  But I also think that we need to quit giving this lip service and actually do something about it.  I don’t know what.  I’m a mother, not a psychologist.  But I do know that if it’s not stopped that a lot of kids are going to grow up to be insecure, with a beat up confidence, and shutdown.  They shutdown because they don’t want to be noticed.  If they’re not noticed then no one will hurt them.
I’m lucky in that my kids have security, confidence and passion to spare.  But each time this happens they lose a little bit more.  What about the kids who don’t have any to spare?  What happens to those kids?  Because their pain is real.  And their pain can last their entire life.
So sticks and stones will break your bones but words will always hurt you.