My oldest boy Leif is 7. He loves talking to adults and reading the classics. But he loves sports too. This past week I saw him making a menu for a future restaurant. When he saw me looking at "duck-stuffed fennel," he laughed and said, "I just made that up cause I mean, how are you going to get duck into fennel." Then he laughed harder. Last year I had to go into his room every night and remove his Bible from under his head because he would fall asleep reading it. He frequently makes comments during our scripture study that amaze me, like, "If God parted the red sea for Moses that means that he can help me with any of my problems." He's a pretty smart little guy in school and is pretty mature in everything....except socially.
Last year he was bullied some in school and he's been apprehensive about the same thing happening this year. I don't think I'm a greedy parent. My children don't have to be popular or have droves of friends. Just one or two good friends would make me so happy, but Leif is frequently left off birthday party lists and rarely invited to play with other kids. Yesterday was the second day of school, and I stood off to the side after I dropped him off and watched him in the play yard till school started. He didn't realize I was still there, in fact, he ran right by me when the bell rang. I watched as he enthusiastically went up to group after group of kids to see if he could play with them, and to a person they either said, "no" or just ignored him. He just kept smiling and would move on to the next group, but my heart was breaking inside.
After school I asked him how it went. He confessed that someone had called him "idiot" on the first day and that for some reason none of the kids would let him play football with them at any of the three recesses. He loves football. When his dad scolded him for interrupting me while we talked, he did something we've rarely seen, he burst into tears and cried for a long time. We knew what he was crying about. Later he went and prayed in his room. I said yet another of many heartfelt prayers myself. I know our challenges can help us be more compassionate and gain character, and hopefully help us learn how to rely more on God and have a personal relationship with him. So I can understand why he lets us experience these (and much worse) difficulties.
For my part with Leif, we work on social skills every day -- stuff like talking in a soft voice, not talking very much, not being silly, making other people feel good about themselves, etc.
But my plea is this: Can't we teach our children to value everyone, even people who are different. Can't we teach our children to care about other people, even at a young age? We don't just have one or two heartless kids out there, every single kid Leif went up to said he couldn't play with him or turned away. He must have gone up to dozens of kids while I watched. And this is the second school. What could a kid have done so wrong in one day of school that he deserved this? To go back to a bad memory: why would a preschool teacher let all the other kids talk about how Leif wasn't invited to a birthday party during class, without making it a teaching moment? And how could the mother who included every kid except mine in the party be a teacher herself?
The only answer to me is that our values are changing. With the increase of bullying, both in high schools and colleges, we must be doing something wrong as a society. Are we so focused on teaching our children to be cool, that we can't teach them to be compassionate? Or are we so busy that this is just not on our list of things to worry about. If you aren't talking to your kids about it, they aren't naturally doing it, believe me. When our children don't have a lot of interaction with people different than them, they don't value anything but what is like them. They don't see "others" as people. I've read that video games and all the new social media have taught children to think less of other individuals as real people and to think more of ourselves as the all-important center. I don't know. I just know that Leif, the same person who didn't accept a new lunchbox or backpack this year because he wanted his parents to have more money, will probably never have the social sense to be "cool." I just hope that doesn't mean that he'll always be alone.
