My little victim

urabell · 19-03-2014 12:33AM #1

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 · 19-03-2014 12:35AM

He's called Grayson Bruce.

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

TheDriver · 19-03-2014 12:35AM

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 · 19-03-2014 12:38AM

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 · 19-03-2014 12:39AM

They should ban crocs in that case.

drunkmonkey · 19-03-2014 12:41AM

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 · 19-03-2014 12:59AM

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 · 19-03-2014 01:15AM

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 · 19-03-2014 01:38AM

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 · 19-03-2014 01:45AM

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 · 19-03-2014 02:12AM

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 · 19-03-2014 02:15AM

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 · 19-03-2014 02:38AM

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 · 19-03-2014 02:44AM

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 · 19-03-2014 02:49AM

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 · 19-03-2014 03:03AM

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 · 19-03-2014 03:31AM

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 · 19-03-2014 03:37AM

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 · 19-03-2014 05:01AM

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 · 19-03-2014 05:33AM

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 · 19-03-2014 06:09AM

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 · 19-03-2014 06:19AM

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 · 19-03-2014 06:58AM

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 · 19-03-2014 07:46AM

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 · 19-03-2014 08:54AM

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

No need to be ashamed!

Lovely Bloke · 19-03-2014 09:10AM

"Bronies" are creepy and weird.

gallag · 19-03-2014 09:22AM

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 · 19-03-2014 09:29AM

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 · 19-03-2014 09:39AM

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 · 19-03-2014 09:40AM

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 · 19-03-2014 09:40AM

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.

My little victim

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