My little victim

urabell

http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/bullied-boy-my-little-pony-bag-1368749-Mar2014/?utm_source=facebook_short

Interactions between kids are a lot like the free market, the school should back off and let the invisible hand deliver. If the kid wants to wear the bag let him wear it, if he gets abuse he should learn to deal with it himself, a month later he'll have given up and will keep his pony loving private or he'll have survived and everyone will have one

anncoates

He's called Grayson Bruce.

A My Little Pony bag was merely the icing on the cake.

TheDriver

Surely his parents/guardians should have the cop on that not all kids are able to respect liberal and alternative ideas. I don't agree with the school banning it but they are correct in that it would be a trigger for bullying like a red rag to a bull......
I particularly like the first line where is already a bullied boy......

urabell

anncoates wrote: »

He's called Grayson Bruce.

A My Little Pony bag was merely the icing on the cake.

Maybe it's an absentee father boy named Sue situation

GenieOz

They should ban crocs in that case.

drunkmonkey

Kids a Brony, no harm in that as long as he doesn't try and marry a horse when he gets older.

Hooves before Hoes!!

Links234

anncoates wrote: »

He's called Grayson Bruce.

His parents must've been big Batman fans? Lets just hope he doesn't take after his folks and name one of his kids rainbow dash.

Serious reply though?
If the kid's being bullied, and the school's response is to ban him from bringing his lunchbox, that's like putting a band-aid on a severed limb in terms of actually dealing with the situation. They should be teaching kids not to bully, not reprimanding the kid being bullied.

urabell

Links234 wrote: »

His parents must've been big Batman fans? Lets just hope he doesn't take after his folks and name one of his kids rainbow dash.

Serious reply though?
If the kid's being bullied, and the school's response is to ban him from bringing his lunchbox, that's like putting a band-aid on a severed limb in terms of actually dealing with the situation. They should be teaching kids not to bully, not reprimanding the kid being bullied.

They said it was a quick stop gap to prevent disruption, cutting out bullying is something that few if any schools can do without kids and parents like these making the job harder

Czarcasm

Ahh for christ sake, all honesty the whole thing is ridiculous, and the people encouraging this nonsense are worse. I actually can't believe what I just read. Some people have absolutely no sense of perspective.

sheikhnguyen

urabell wrote: »

http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/bullied-boy-my-little-pony-bag-1368749-Mar2014/?utm_source=facebook_short

Interactions between kids are a lot like the free market, the school should back off and let the invisible hand deliver. If the kid wants to wear the bag let him wear it, if he gets abuse he should learn to deal with it himself, a month later he'll have given up and will keep his pony loving private or he'll have survived and everyone will have one

While I can sympathise with the life lesson aspect of what you are saying and god knows I went through a few of them myself and emerged the stronger for it, not everyone does.

Allowing these kids to treat him like that could profoundly damage the boy, we can all think of kids in our schools who got tarred with a certain brush when they were young and it followed them and stigmatised them throughout their school years.

While he seems to be taking it pretty well it is still totally unacceptable and heads should roll in the school administration for their attitude. It's all well and good to say kids will be kids, but that is only if we let them. As a teacher I can say that instead of asking the boy to leave his bag at home the school should have taken this excellent teachable moment to educate his peers on acceptance, diversity and individualism.

urabell

sheikhnguyen wrote: »

While I can sympathise with the life lesson aspect of what you are saying and god knows I went through a few of them myself and emerged the stronger for it, not everyone does.

Allowing these kids to treat him like that could profoundly damage the boy, we can all think of kids in our schools who got tarred with a certain brush when they were young and it followed them and stigmatised them throughout their school years.

While he seems to be taking it pretty well it is still totally unacceptable and heads should roll in the school administration for their attitude. It's all well and good to say kids will be kids, but that is only if we let them. As a teacher I can say that instead of asking the boy to leave his bag at home the school should have taken this excellent teachable moment to educate his peers on acceptance, diversity and individualism.

Being tarred with a certain brush is not guaranteed to follow him through school,

Which is worse?

Hey remember you had that short MLP phase?

or

Hey remember you made international news as the poster boy for bullying?

He's marked for life now

Czarcasm

sheikhnguyen wrote: »

While I can sympathise with the life lesson aspect of what you are saying and god knows I went through a few of them myself and emerged the stronger for it, not everyone does.

Allowing these kids to treat him like that could profoundly damage the boy, we can all think of kids in our schools who got tarred with a certain brush when they were young and it followed them and stigmatised them throughout their school years.

While he seems to be taking it pretty well it is still totally unacceptable and heads should roll in the school administration for their attitude. It's all well and good to say kids will be kids, but that is only if we let them. As a teacher I can say that instead of asking the boy to leave his bag at home the school should have taken this excellent teachable moment to educate his peers on acceptance, diversity and individualism.

And the next time someone says boo to the boy? Do you not think the spreading of this story will do "profound damage" to the boy when he isn't getting the same validation from the internet any more after, ohh, I dunno, the next 10 years of having to go through life like everyone else!

"Heads should roll", over this? Seriously? I can understand your point about teaching diversity, acceptance and individualism if the child were a member of an ethnic minority, but heads rolling over being teased about a lunch box? And the mother comparing it to rape? 28,000 followers and a Facebook page set up "in his honour". You don't think any of that will have a "profound effect" on the child's sense of perspective?

It's given him a warped view that the world will comfort him while he's still a cute little kid with a brony bag, but when he's 15 and the world has lost interest because he's not so cute any more, there's still going to be a whole fcukton of internet trolls firing abuse at him left, right and centre, but the world won't care, they'll have moved on to the next cute kid in need of love and validation from strangers the internet.

Fantastic parenting skills there - when your child is bullied, show them that strangers on the internet love them. Isn't that the complete opposite of everything we've tried to drill into children for the last 20 years?

Wotsername

Ah yeah, but in all fairness Czarcasm, It was only a pony. "Dom dom dom doobie dom dom, Yeaah yeaah yeah yay yay yay yay, Only a pony"

sheikhnguyen

urabell wrote: »

Being tarred with a certain brush is not guaranteed to follow him through school,

Which is worse?

Hey remember you had that short MLP phase?

or

Hey remember you made international news as the poster boy for bullying?

He's marked for life now

More likely to be:

"hey queer boy, remember you had that MLP bag you fag"

The school is at fault here not the boy or his mother. Sometimes it takes something like this to help people, in this case his school, to pull their heads out of their bums.

sheikhnguyen

Czarcasm wrote: »

And the next time someone says boo to the boy? Do you not think the spreading of this story will do "profound damage" to the boy when he isn't getting the same validation from the internet any more after, ohh, I dunno, the next 10 years of having to go through life like everyone else!

"Heads should roll", over this? Seriously? I can understand your point about teaching diversity, acceptance and individualism if the child were a member of an ethnic minority, but heads rolling over being teased about a lunch box? And the mother comparing it to rape? 28,000 followers and a Facebook page set up "in his honour". You don't think any of that will have a "profound effect" on the child's sense of perspective?

It's given him a warped view that the world will comfort him while he's still a cute little kid with a brony bag, but when he's 15 and the world has lost interest because he's not so cute any more, there's still going to be a whole fcukton of internet trolls firing abuse at him left, right and centre, but the world won't care, they'll have moved on to the next cute kid in need of love and validation from strangers the internet.

Fantastic parenting skills there - when your child is bullied, show them that strangers on the internet love them. Isn't that the complete opposite of everything we've tried to drill into children for the last 20 years?

I think you are missing the point, this should never have happened, the focus is the school not the boy, he is receiving support, the school scorn as it should be. It is unlikely he is even aware of what is happening on the internet or at least the extent of it beyond what he is told by his parents.

But you should stop focusing on the mother and start focusing on the school for it's neanderthal reaction to his treatment by his peers.

h2005

The parents should have had the cop on to know he'd get slagged for having a lunchbox like that. It's not nice but it's pretty ****ing obvious.

urabell

sheikhnguyen wrote: »

More likely to be:

"hey queer boy, remember you had that MLP bag you fag"

The school is at fault here not the boy or his mother. Sometimes it takes something like this to help people, in this case his school, to pull their heads out of their bums.

Point still stands


"hey queer boy, remember you had that MLP bag you fag"

Firstly is a horrible attempt to insult someone but that's beside the point.
It's a whole lot less damaging than

"Hey remember that time you made international headlines by standing up for your right to wear a MLP bag and your mother likened the name calling to rape"

urabell

sheikhnguyen wrote: »

I think you are missing the point, this should never have happened, the focus is the school not the boy, he is receiving support, the school scorn as it should be. It is unlikely he is even aware of what is happening on the internet or at least the extent of it beyond what he is told by his parents.

But you should stop focusing on the mother and start focusing on the school for it's neanderthal reaction to his treatment by his peers.

The school have admitted it was a knee jerk reaction to something that was causing disruption. Bullying is not an easy problem to solve, banning the bag will do a lot less harm than huge amounts of internet exposure that will follow him to the grave, likely through an early noose if his parents don't get their act together. Kid needs a swift introduction to reality.

Irish Guitarist

There's probably too many children bullying him for the school to do anything about. If half the children in the school are at it they can't expel them all. Are the people signing these petitions going to be looking out for him when he brings in his lunchbox and continues to be bullied?

Victor

In fairness https://www.google.ie/search?q=my+little+pony+world+of+tanks&client=firefox-a&hs=Cr9&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=3R0pU7fEFpOjhgevrICQDQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1093&bih=476

FullblownRose

urabell wrote: »

http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/bullied-boy-my-little-pony-bag-1368749-Mar2014/?utm_source=facebook_short

Interactions between kids are a lot like the free market, the school should back off and let the invisible hand deliver. If the kid wants to wear the bag let him wear it, if he gets abuse he should learn to deal with it himself, a month later he'll have given up and will keep his pony loving private or he'll have survived and everyone will have one

After reading that I expected to find that the boy was going in dressed in a complete horse costume. What an over reaction. I would barely have noticed this kind of thing when I was at school let alone passed mean comments about it and cannot understand the mentality of people who find it remarkable. IE the school children and the rest of the world.

''If he gets abuse'' it is the school's responsibility to deal with the bullies. When will people realise that you shouldn't look to the bullied child to find the reason for the bullying. There's always an 'excuse' e.g child had a particular lunchbox wore this outfit glasses colour of hair/ skin or looks in general this is placing the blame on the child and excusing and justifying the bullying behaviour. I worry about grown adults who see advocate letting bullies do their thing and bullied kids deal with it on their own. Nobody has to conform to whatever they are being told they should be wearing or packing their lunch in and regardless of the excuses given by bulies the problem lies with them only and not the bullied child. All bullying needs to be treated as bad behaviour, regardless of the so called reasons, cildren and adults need to know it's not appropriate or ok to pass insulting remarks or target peope for ANY reason, because there is NO justification. End of story.

FullblownRose

urabell wrote: »

Point still stands


"hey queer boy, remember you had that MLP bag you fag"

Firstly is a horrible attempt to insult someone but that's beside the point.
It's a whole lot less damaging than

"Hey remember that time you made international headlines by standing up for your right to wear a MLP bag and your mother likened the name calling to rape"

Her point was clear and valid. In a sense they are not a million miles apart : The reactions to this and the attitude toward rape are basically the same and stem from the same kind of mentalities e.g failure through unwillingness to recognise who is at fault and the condonation/ legitimisation of bad, abusive behaviour. She isn't doing the child harm by publicising this, but I suppose she realises there will be eejits who twist the point she is making.

The sad thing is the trigger for the bullying is something in the lives of the bullies and their behaviour is a by product of that, the little handbag or whatever 'reason#' bullies latch onto is just an excuse for their displays of agression and acting out their problems on others, and the only way to stop it from happening is to adress the root cause with the bullies themselves- instead of endlessly condoning it and accepting slagging and bullying

Sunglasses Ron

h2005 wrote: »

The parents should have had the cop on to know he'd get slagged for having a lunchbox like that. It's not nice but it's pretty ****ing obvious.

Exactly. I don't even recall MLP really but it was a girls cartoon, right? The boy is nine. If he had a Thomas the Tank Engine or a Barney bag he still would have copped flak because he is too old for that show.

But his parents named him Grayson, so you can hardly expect them to be sharp enough to tell him there are certain things one doesn't say/ display in school. The mileage of piss taking rhyming from that name alone will be going for the next ten years (or a lifetime, is he grows up to be an unlikable person to share a workplace with)

Czarcasm

sheikhnguyen wrote: »

I think you are missing the point, this should never have happened, the focus is the school not the boy, he is receiving support, the school scorn as it should be. It is unlikely he is even aware of what is happening on the internet or at least the extent of it beyond what he is told by his parents.

But you should stop focusing on the mother and start focusing on the school for it's neanderthal reaction to his treatment by his peers.

I don't think it's beyond the bounds of the imagination to suggest that the mother is making the child aware of the "support" he is receiving on the internet, not that it's worth a whole pile anyway, but that's another story.

I'm focusing on the mother because she is a responsible adult who is setting her child up for a life of expected entitlement to do as he pleases and rather than teach him "You do something stupid, you're gonna get roasted", she has taught him "The world revolves around you".

FullblownRose wrote: »

Her point was clear and valid. In a sense they are not a million miles apart : The reactions to this and the attitude toward rape are basically the same and stem from the same kind of mentalities e.g failure through unwillingness to recognise who is at fault and the condonation/ legitimisation of bad, abusive behaviour. She isn't doing the child harm by publicising this, but I suppose she realises there will be eejits who twist the point she is making.

The mother comparing this incident to rape is so wide of the mark it's not even in the same galaxy, she clearly has no idea about rape. The only idiot in this story is a mother who didn't tell her child "No!", and instead compares the incident to rape. The school were absolutely right to tell the child leave the bag at home if they don't want to be bullied, but by the mother's over-reaction you'd swear they'd raped the child.

Common sense seems to have left the building in favour of entitlement. This is the same country where an 18 year old sues her own parents for maintenance.

drunkmonkey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0sW8KrZF5s

No need to be ashamed!

Lovely Bloke

"Bronies" are creepy and weird.

gallag

I think the world would be a worse place if children were repressed from expressing their feelings to a peer doing something completely bat **** crazy, imagine yourself in work being silenced from slagging a coworker for bringing his piece in a mlp lunch box!!! Do we really want the next generation to be so repressed on the humour front? This is a form of darwins law, the slagging is why kids mature and stop playing with toys that are to the point of comedy wrong for their age group!!

Sunglasses Ron

gallag wrote: »

I think the world would be a worse place if children were repressed from expressing their feelings to a peer doing something completely bat **** crazy, imagine yourself in work being silenced from slagging a coworker for bringing his piece in a mlp lunch box!!! Do we really want the next generation to be so repressed on the humour front? This is a form of darwins law, the slagging is why kids mature and stop playing with toys that are to the point of comedy wrong for their age group!!

Agreed. Piss taking and banter is an intricate part of Irish culture for one thing. If we have a society where nobody gets the piss taken out of them for being tight, for being a hipster, being into whatever, it is a sad way for society to go.

gallag

Yep, two ways to handle this, kid gets relentlessly mocked and goes home to parents crying, parents say "wtf do you expect boy" and the next day he goes into school with a transformers lunch box and gets the admiration of his peers and probably his first kiss from a girl, all is well in the world!

Option two is his parents start a media campaign and force his peers only to mock him behind his back, he never has any fears of not adopting social norms and makes no friends forever more to be remembered as "that mlp guy" and dies a lonely virgin.

miss no stars

There's an ideal world and there's the real world. In an ideal world the kid would bring whatever lunchbox he wants and if he got any flack for it the other kids would be shown the error of their ways and would cease and desist.

In the real world the kid is in a southern state of the USA, he's already being picked on and the school are trying to deal with it. He's bringing in a lunchbox that will get noticed (of course it will, he's already the class target, the other kids are obviously looking to find ammunition) and it'll be yet another thing he gets bullied over. The phrase "pick your battles" comes to mind. If he's getting bullied for being fat and for having a my little pony lunch box well it's fairly obvious how to stop the bullying over the lunch box - swap it for something neutral! Telling the other kids to be more accepting of diversity won't cut it. He's already a target and now his parents have effectively put flashing arrows all around pointing at him saying "pick on me".

Sometimes it's just better to pick your battles. MLP isn't inherent to his identity or sense of self. It's just something he likes. However, being bullied is seriously detrimental to his well-being. The school are right. I bet if they let him have the box the parents would be on to the principal more often complaining about the bullying their child is getting. School is like a practice run for the workplace. It's where you learn many of the skills you need (conversation, cooperation, literacy, numeracy, reading social cues) to become an effective member of a workplace. And sometimes in a workplace you have to toe the line and fit in. End of.

Best course of action the school could take would be to say "sorry, you're right, it's not fair to just ban him from having a lunch box expressing his individuality (even if it's getting him pounded regularly!), we're banning ALL character lunch boxes".

FullblownRose

Bizarre. This tacit acceptance and even agreement with bullying if your style or actions don't fit with the majority. It's not accetable and no child should have to expect to be bullied and change to try to avoid the attentions of bullies. If most of the children are doing it then most of the children have to be taught not to. There is no excuse and the mums comparison to attitudes around rape and the attitudes around bullying was absolutely on the nail- in no way was she comparing the bullying to rape and you are conflating the two to make her seem silly and dramatic. No parent should have to asess their child for anything that would mark them out as an easy target for others to bully. You need to stop blaming the boy with this bag and start focusing on the kids who are doing the taunting. They are the oes in the wrong , and look at your own sneering attitude to the child's lunchbox. Very, very judgemental. It would seem the child has to learn to repress his own harmless interests because many of you think school is a training ground for kids to grow up knowing that it is fine to be ****ty to others who look or act differently. School should actually be a safe environment free from bullying with no conditions on that safety.If someone at work does not aprove of your hair colour or anything else about you you are protected from your whole office turning against you and your employer has to intervene if they do. Bullying is as random and sensless as that and the onus is not o the child to make sure they stay under bullies radar.

jimgoose

He should bring whatever damn bag he liks to school, and become versed with the ancient art of a quick hoof to My Little Ballsack.

miss no stars

FullblownRose wrote: »

Bizarre. This tacit acceptance and even agreement with bullying if your style or actions don't fit with the majority. It's not accetable and no child should have to expect to be bullied and change to try to avoid the attentions of bullies. If most of the children are doing it then most of the children have to be taught not to. There is no excuse and the mums comparison to attitudes around rape and the attitudes around bullying was absolutely on the nail- in no way was she comparing the bullying to rape and you are conflating the two to make her seem silly and dramatic. No parent should have to asess their child for anything that would mark them out as an easy target for others to bully. You need to stop blaming the boy with this bag and start focusing on the kids who are doing the taunting. They are the oes in the wrong , and look at your own sneering attitude to the child's lunchbox. Very, very judgemental. It would seem the child has to learn to repress his own harmless interests because many of you think school is a training ground for kids to grow up knowing that it is fine to be ****ty to others who look or act differently. School should actually be a safe environment free from bullying with no conditions on that safety.If someone at work does not aprove of your hair colour or anything else about you you are protected from your whole office turning against you and your employer has to intervene if they do. Bullying is as random and sensless as that and the onus is not o the child to make sure they stay under bullies radar.

Nobody is blaming the boy for being bullied, but just saying that he's adding fuel to the fire. Get the bullying under control without the situation going full bloody nuclear, then he can bring in the lunch box and the kids bullying him won't say a word because the bullying has already been dealt with and they know he's off limits.

But while they're actively trying to get an already bad situation under control?!

Shanotheslayer

How did his parents not know by giving him a my little pony lunchbox it would just bring hassle? Course it would. So what if he likes it, in about 10 years hes going to regret it especially with this ridiculous campaign.

Sunglasses Ron

FullblownRose wrote: »

Bizarre. This tacit acceptance and even agreement with bullying if your style or actions don't fit with the majority. It's not accetable and no child should have to expect to be bullied and change to try to avoid the attentions of bullies. If most of the children are doing it then most of the children have to be taught not to. .

An attempt to do away with "boys will be boys" if you will. Boys take the piss. Boys brawl and grapple in the playground. 14 yea old boys drag younger ones down th back of the bus and mosh in on him- two years later that victim does the same thing to some younger lad who will follow suit in two years. It is all part of growing up, and has been for generations- what we have left today are lighter versions of how it was done when we were all living in Celtic, tribal warrior society. This politically correct attempt to re wire the psyche of children that has been developing for thousands of years is frankly scary.

Czarcasm

sheikhnguyen wrote: »

I think you are missing the point, this should never have happened, the focus is the school not the boy, he is receiving support, the school scorn as it should be. It is unlikely he is even aware of what is happening on the internet or at least the extent of it beyond what he is told by his parents.

But you should stop focusing on the mother and start focusing on the school for it's neanderthal reaction to his treatment by his peers.

Grayson has developed a following on Facebook after a friend made a support page for him. Grayson stands by his favorite cartoon and the message he says it sends. His mother says, why not?

Source: http://www.wlos.com/shared/news/features/top-stories/stories/wlos_-school-bully-concerns-15463.shtml

And the Facebook page itself -

https://www.facebook.com/SupportForGrayson

Please note: This is the Official page for Grayson- run by his parents and friends of the family. Please come here for calls to action and support!

There are other pages being created by strangers- we hope they have the best intent- but they are asking for people to do things that the family is not in support of at this time. Please continue to check here for the official updates!

This is also the only page Grayson is checking- so if you want to send him a message- this is the place to do it!

Completely proportionate response of course.

BraziliaNZ

My Austrian cousin used to play with MLP, a very odd child he was. Now he's a monk somewhere in the alps and my Auntie would do anything to get him out of there. This should be a warning to the parents of the child in question.

FullblownRose

Sunglasses Ron wrote: »

An attempt to do away with "boys will be boys" if you will. Boys take the piss. Boys brawl and grapple in the playground. 14 yea old boys drag younger ones down th back of the bus and mosh in on him- two years later that victim does the same thing to some younger lad who will follow suit in two years. It is all part of growing up, and has been for generations- what we have left today are lighter versions of how it was done when we were all living in Celtic, tribal warrior society. This politically correct attempt to re wire the psyche of children that has been developing for thousands of years is frankly scary.

Er..that's the cycle of abuse you just described and it's not normal nor healthy part of growing up. We're not warriors this is kids in a school there to learn but not learn you have to take abuse because you are a boy or because the abusers were abused and now its your turn . You dont understand or you are forgetting the difference between bullying and horseplay. We're a modern civilised society not warrior celts.

smoking_kills

Czarcasm wrote: »

Source: http://www.wlos.com/shared/news/features/top-stories/stories/wlos_-school-bully-concerns-15463.shtml

And the Facebook page itself -

https://www.facebook.com/SupportForGrayson





Completely proportionate response of course.

Jesus, i think every social justice warrior on the planet turned up on that Facebook page, some of the comments are unbelievable. I especially like the one where apparently the school is bullying him?????

anncoates

Sunglasses Ron wrote: »

An attempt to do away with "boys will be boys" if you will. Boys take the piss. Boys brawl and grapple in the playground. 14 yea old boys drag younger ones down th back of the bus and mosh in on him- two years later that victim does the same thing to some younger lad who will follow suit in two years. It is all part of growing up, and has been for generations- what we have left today are lighter versions of how it was done when we were all living in Celtic, tribal warrior society. This politically correct attempt to re wire the psyche of children that has been developing for thousands of years is frankly scary.

While I agree to a certain extent that we shouldn't be trying to unduly stamp out boisterousness and iron out gender differences, it also shouldn't be an excuse to allow children to be co-opted into that boisterousness against their will.

Rhotheta

The kid needs to learn to make the choices that are in his best interest. That doesn't excuse the bullies though, they need to be punished.

FullblownRose

Nor should it be used as a blanket excuse to shirk responsibility for setting a good example to your kids or your students and expect them to be reasonably well mannered Telling a 9 year old boy to kill himself is not normal behaviour and that is apparently not the worst of what was said to this Grayson boy by other children around his own age. That isn't a developmentally normal thing for children of that age to think or to say to another child and it in no way resembles banter, light hearted ribbing or irish style piss taking. Most people know the difference between taking the piss and being deliberately mean and hurtful and that there is a line you don't cross.

Life choices should never be dictated by the possibility of physical or verbal abuse from others. We should not have to base our decisions on whether others will like them or not (providing our choices aren't harmful to others, of course) This is what the boy is learning because his mum is showing him. This is a positive thing.

CrazyRabbit

h2005 wrote: »

The parents should have had the cop on to know he'd get slagged for having a lunchbox like that. It's not nice but it's pretty ****ing obvious.

Yup, and they should make sure he only wears trendy designer clothes, isn't gay, doesn't wear glasses, or isn't shorter than his peers etc.

People like you are part of the problem. You just don't get it.

Czarcasm

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Yup, and they should make sure he only wears trendy designer clothes, isn't gay, doesn't wear glasses, or isn't shorter than his peers etc.

People like you are part of the problem. You just don't get it.

I don't get why you feel the need to insult people to make your point either tbh. But how and ever anyway, people are going to be bullied, it's a fact. It's not nice, but it's a fact. The sensible thing to do is not make yourself any more of a target.

This isn't Rosa Parks or Harvey Milk type stuff, this is all because the child knowingly makes themselves a target. A person can't change the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. What they can do though, is think about the consequences of their actions, or their parents (Where's the father in this actually?) think about the consequences of their actions for their children.

If a child insists on making themselves a target, and the parents insist on the child's right to be a target, well, somebody has to step in and let common sense prevail at some point, and in this case the school did the right thing for the sake of the child, even if the parents don't see that. Why would they, their child is now a little celebrity, and child stars always turn out well rounded members of society, right?

Daith

Czarcasm wrote: »

If a child insists on making themselves a target, and the parents insist on the child's right to be a target, well, somebody has to step in and let common sense prevail at some point, and in this case the school did the right thing for the sake of the child, even if the parents don't see that.

The bag isn't the issue. What would happen if the child was bullied because he was fat? Should the school tell him to get liposuction. Or if a child is bullied because they're good in school? Should they do badly on exams?

Are we really living in a world where the bullies decide how somebody else should live?

urabell

Daith wrote: »

The bag isn't the issue.it is What would happen if the child was bullied because he was fat? school could ban unhealthy lunches and offer to help educate parents on healthy living choices.Should the school tell him to get liposuction. no Or if a child is bullied because they're good in school? Should they do badly on exams? They should learn to stand up from themselves, parents should instil confidence not pass on the blame

Are we really living in a world where the bullies decide how somebody else should live? Don't pretend we live in world where we should never have to adjust our behaviour because of the reactions of others

.

Daith

urabell wrote: »

Don't pretend we live in world where we should never have to adjust our behaviour because of the reactions of others

Could you change your behavior and use the quote system better on this?

Though I do like the idea that a child being bullied because they're fat means the school should change the lunch menu of the entire school. Go bully power!

urabell

Daith wrote: »

Could you change your behavior and use the quote system better on this? no

Though I do like the idea that a child being bullied because they're fat means the school should change the lunch menu of the entire school. Go bully power!No you're right, nothing positive should ever come from bullying. There is just no possible way the school could both improve the student's health and also punish the bullies

.

Daith

urabell wrote: »

Could you change your behavior and use the quote system better on this? no

So you expect this kid to do something and conform to somebody else's view and you won't do it?

Czarcasm

Daith wrote: »

The bag isn't the issue.

According to everything I've read, including the Facebook page, the bag is very much the issue, or at least, the child's interest in what the bag represents, is the issue.

What would happen if the child was bullied because he was fat? Should the school tell him to get liposuction. Or if a child is bullied because they're good in school? Should they do badly on exams?

Those aren't the issues here, there's no evidence to suggest either way that the child is overweight or very clever. I'm sure the school has to handle each situation differently depending on the context. What you're suggesting though are extremes, the very same as the mother associating her child being bullied with rape. It's emotive and certainly makes people sit up, but it trivialises rape.

Are we really living in a world where the bullies decide how somebody else should live?

Yes, yes we are, and there are better ways to overcome that than rallying against the people who are trying to do something about it. The mother in this instance should've worked with the school rather than started a media campaign to get validation for her parenting choices.

We're also living in a world where for some people there is less importance placed on the person, and more importance placed on the issues they represent. That's where the "million likes for a child who thinks they're ugly" stuff comes from. It's utterly meaningless, and it's trivialising the issue of bullying.

Daith

Czarcasm wrote: »

According to everything I've read, including the Facebook page, the bag is very much the issue, or at least, the child's interest in what the bag represents, is the issue.

No the issue is the bullies and their parents being awful parents.