Bullies

This was a really rough day.

When Ella and nochElla burst in the door after school, they were stumbling over each other to talk. Three boys from Ella's class had stolen Ella's school shoes the night before, thrown them in the boy's toilet, and peed on them.

That was far from the perfect crime: the custodian found the shoes as he was cleaning the school, and fished them out and washed them. And then he walked around the school, inspecting the kids' cubbies, trying to figure out which poor kid owned them.  And so, this morning, confronted with the evidence of their crime, the boys crumbled and confessed what they'd done.

As the girls relayed the story, they were both seemed indignant, but also amused by the boys' stupidity.

But as soon as nochElla went home, Ella, who had been brave all day at school, burst into tears.  "I changed my mind, Mom. I don't want to stay for the holidays at all. I want to go HOME NOW! I miss my friends! I miss Kirkland! They would never do anything like this there! Everyone is so mean here! I HATE SWITZERLAND!"

So. I ask you. What would you do?  This was some pretty vile bullying that my poor daughter was facing. And I was feeling sort of helpless: I've never met these boys, and I don't know their parents. I only have phone numbers for them, and I don't really feel confident that I could carry on a conversation with them.  I don't know what I would say to them: You're doing a lousy job of raising your boys?

We figured that the best we could do is talk to the teacher (to try to figure out why this happened, and to assure ourselves that the school was taking this seriously and that they'd protect our daughter) and to try to comfort Ella.

So she and I talked a lot today. We talked a lot about how she shouldn't let those bullies rob her of her fun time here, or keep her from going on her Christmas vacation. We talked about how she really does have friends here, and loyal ones, and how she shouldn't forget that. And we talked about how proud I am of her.

What I wanted to do was wrap her up in a blanket and let her eat ice cream and watch a movie. Maybe I should have.  But aside from the rest of her homework, Ella found out that her class has a math test tomorrow. Kind of a nasty one: Ella had to be able to go get through each of the columns on this sheet in under a minute, and in German. She could do two of them in under forty seconds. Try it: it's not easy. And I think it's possible that the math is a little extra tricky for Ella because, in German, numbers are backwards: for example, sixty-three could be translated, literally, as "three and sixty".

But with the other two columns, she kept psyching herself out and choking. The time element was adding to her already high stress level.

So she was having a time of it: between practice minutes ("zweiundneunzig, neununddreizig...") I'd hear little rants exploding from the room ("This is AWFUL! I never had homework in Kirkland! This is so UNFAIR! I'll NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THIS! I HATE IT HERE!")

A rough day.

Because I'm writing this the morning after, I can tell you some of the fall-out: Dennis walked Ella to school in the morning to talk with the teacher.  NochElla ran up to Ella immediately, asking why Dennis was there. "Well, to talk about the shoes", he told her. "Oh, I can tell you exactly which boys did it! One was that boy over there," gesturing to a crowd of forty boys.  "The one wearing blue!" More than half of them were. But that's okay: Dennis wasn't planning roughing up the little punk, tempting though it must have been. Instead, he asked nochElla why he thought the boys did this to Ella. She knew exactly why: "Because they're DUMB!" Our Ella agreed whole-heartedly: "Yeah! Those boys are DUMB!"

I take that as a good sign. Bullies are most damaging when you believe that you deserve what they're doing, when they make you feel like you're unlikable. Ella doesn't seem to think that, thank goodness.

Dennis talked to the teacher, and here's what she said.  The school was really horrified that this had happened. Apparently there's some level of bullying in secondary school (in 4th through 6th grade) but it's very unusual for this to happen in the primary grades. So they're taking the incident very seriously, and they're being as stern as they can with the boys. The class is planning on having a fun trip into the woods in a couple of weeks: the boys won't be going. And the boys will be paying for Ella's new shoes. (Ella floated the idea that maybe she should find some really expensive ones, this time.) And they've lost all their recesses. And they're talking to the parents. And they're having the boys write apologies. And so forth. Ella is big on Justice, and she seems to feel that it is being served, so I think that's making things better for her, too.

Dennis asked the teacher directly if there was something Ella had done to provoke this kind of behavior, but the teacher said no, no! Ella's been doing a really good job so far this year, and she's noticed how extra hard Ella's trying to reach out to the other kids and be friendly with them, despite the language barrier. She was really surprised, and embarrassed, that this had happened, and they'll be doing everything they can to address the situation.

And she was really concerned about Ella: she said that Ella did such a good job of handling the situation yesterday, keeping calm and being poised about it all, but she was worried that Ella would have been really sad last night.

For good reason, but, happily, Ella was back in high spirits today: she was doing really well when Dennis left. And she was just as happy when she came home from school today. At one point, she joked "You know, what on earth were those boys thinking? 'Hm...I'm bored...what should we do? I know! Let's put someone's shoes in the toilet and pee on them! That sounds like fun!'"

I have to say, a part of me was worried that this would be shrugged off, as schoolhouse teasing generally is in this country. Part of my concern was founded in the fact that I didn't hear, yesterday, from the school or from the teacher, and that I had to hear about the whole incident through my daughter. (This morning the teacher did apologize for not getting in touch last night. I guess she never got around to it, as she was busy with the boys, she certainly couldn't trust them to pass along what happened and their parents.)

Maybe it's good that the school got this wake-up call, that some of the the things that are happening on the playground aren't so harmless after all. I feel assured that the teacher will definitely be keeping a more careful eye on the mood of the classroom, now, and that she'll be more protective of my daughter.

Oh, and here's something else that we did.  For the intrepid custodian, the one who went to all that trouble to make sure this situation was sorted out, we baked some cookies.  I wasn't sure if that would be too weird, but Dennis shrugged: "We can be weird. It's okay." We just wanted the custodian to know that we were grateful.  Dennis gave them to him this morning, and he seemed surprised ("But I was just doing my job! It would be ridiculous if someone gave me cookies every time I did my job!") but pleased as well.

And here's something that we will do.  As I told Ella, when we move back home, we'll remember the lessons we learned here, and we'll try extra hard to be kind and welcoming to new kids and new families, and also to the kids who seem to be underdogs. We'll try to take something positive away from this experience: a deepened sense of empathy.

As resilient as Ella's being, well, we all know it, deep in our bones. It's no fun being bullied.