Cyberbullying…a term that has been tossed around the media in the last decade, and frankly not enough attention has been paid to this issue. Perhaps you can’t truly appreciate an issue like this until you’ve experienced it in your own home. Maybe there are issues which seem so abstract and otherworldly, that you cannot phantom how horrific the effects are until it results in a premature death of a teen or preteen too scared, too broken, too ashamed to reach out for help.
As a child of the 80’s, I grew up in a time where everyone knew who the bullies were. You knew who ruled the school bus or the school playground, and you avoided them, if you could. Bullying was a local problem and sometimes resulted in confrontation. I can vividly remember scoring detention for beating the snot out of my own childhood bully in 6th grade. I had taken his torment for long enough, had met my breaking point, and I finally stood up to him. He never bullied another kid after that. I can also remember times when, as an adolescent, my own conduct or actions could be interpreted as bullying: things I said to insult others, lack of support for those under attack, or making comments about more insecure kids around “the cool” kids to score points and protect my own insecurities.
As I progressed as a teenager, and shamefully because I had gained popularity in high school, I took great lengths to show empathy and compassion to people who were otherwise on the extremes of school. I remember at graduation that one girl came up to me and thanked me for being one of the few people who were nice to her in high school. That moment broke my heart, but it made me more dedicate than ever to standing up for those who feel they have no voice.
Follow me below the fold and I’ll share my own family’s current struggle with cyberbullying.
I’m a family guy, that was instilled in me from my father. I work hard, but I don’t dilly dally at work when I could be home enjoying my family. My wife and I have three children: a 13 year old daughter, an 11 year old daughter, and a 5 year old son. My wife and I have both been married previously. Both of us married very young at 21 and both of those marriages ended in divorce. I have continued to have an amicable relationship with my ex-wife and, I’d like to think, we are doing a good job raising our 11 year old. My wife’s ex has been out of the picture since our oldest daughter was 2. In fact, when we started dating, my daughter was so young that, other than granddad and uncle, I was one of the few father figures she had ever known. In 2010, prior to deploying to Afghanistan, I was able to formally adopt her as my own, and she’s every bit as much my child as either one of the other children.
In 2013, we made the move from military life to civilian practice, and made the decision to take an opportunity in RI, a move that wasn’t without much consideration because both my wife and I are from the South. We made the decision to move to an area that had great public schools and truly felt like a Norman Rockwell print. Our oldest daughter started 6th grade at the local middle school that fall.
Up until last fall, we thought our daughter was perfectly happy with her new school. She had good friends, great teachers, and seemed very happy. As 7th grade approached, my wife and I interpreted her melancholy at returning to school as nothing more than a combination of hormones and unwillingness to let go of what had been a great summer. In October, we were notified by the school that our daughter had been in a class with a boy and the two of them had been assigned to work on a creative writing project. They were required to write a story jointly and this was done during class time. The school had contacted us because they were concerned about the content of the project the two were working on. Their working draft contained some over the top vulgarities and sexual innuendo, but much of it was very misplaced, much as you would expect a teen or preteen who has no experience in the world to express. We could see, because of the way the classroom computers were set up, which child had written which portion of the project. Because both kids were involved, even though there was evidence our daughter had tried to delete her partner’s entries and, even though her entries were much milder, both kids were suspended for a day from school. We were informed by the school administrators that the kid in question had a long history of inappropriate behavior and borderline bullying at school. We accepted our daughter’s punishment, and we sat her down and had a lengthy, tear filled, discussion with her about what was appropriate and what was not. We also had a long conversation about choice of friends, because our daughter is an overly trusting child and easily drawn to friends, which may have set up this whole situation. After our conversation, she agreed that it probably wasn’t the best choice to be friends with this boy, and she was relieved that it was ok to not have any contact with him anymore, he had been tormenting her the year before and it had made her uncomfortable. She had been dreading interacting with him in 7th grade. We were assured by the school administrators, as well as the guidance counselor, that the kids would be moved to different classes and no interaction would be allowed at school.
Fast forward to now. We, wrongfully, assumed that everything at school had resolved itself. Our 13 year old has been a typical pubescent kid in the last six months. She has grown into such a beautiful young girl and is blossoming, in many ways, as hard as that is for dad to accept. She’s a great girl. She doesn’t go to friend’s house without our permission and without us talking to her friend’s parents. She studies hard and makes great grades. Yet, this summer, a melancholy has clouded over her. Neither my wife, nor I, could put a finger on it, despite trying to talk with her about this. We went ahead with our summer plans and the kids spent several weeks on vacation with our parents in Louisiana. When our daughter got back last week, after grandma had returned home, she confronted my wife in tears. She couldn’t even talk, she just held up her phone with a YouTube video and asked mom to watch it. Neither my wife nor I could have been prepared for what we saw. We found a series of videos posted to YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook that the boy who had been her class partner has posted as “diaries” pretending to be our daughter. I cannot begin to express the furor and anger I experienced watching these videos, and, at the same time, deep sadness for my daughter. This boy has produced a whole series of videos in which he wears a wig and pretends to by our daughter saying horrible things such as “check out my lovely breast implants”...our daughter has been blossoming like I said above, he suggests that our daughter keeps tic tacs in her purse because they’re actually drugs…no she just has an obscene love for tic tacs, he proceeds to mock her style, her body, makes jokes about waking up in strange boys apartments after drunken parties, and even suggests that our daughter is close to her guidance counselor because she’s in a lesbian affair with her, which was privately devastating to our daughter because she has confided in my wife and I that she has feelings for one of her close girlfriends and is afraid of expressing those feelings.
So, my wife and I have moved through enough stages of grief that we are at a point of taking action. We’ve contacted the school and received a, frankly, milquetoast response from school administrators saying that they will be contacting the other child’s parents and that we could contact the local police department if we chose to do so. Right now, we fully intend to file a complaint, but we are so very torn about the prospect of making things worse for our daughter while trying to stand up for her. I’ve gone so far as to reach out to some of my friends in the military who have extensive intelligence/hacking expertise in the hopes of scrubbing everything from the internet once the police have a copy of the videos. Our daughters response: “It doesn’t matter, it’s already out there, and the world has seen in”. In her mind, the internet equates to the world and the world has bought in to the lies being spread about her. We’re doing our best to support her and listen to her while trying to fight this and we have her set up to meet with a local child psychologist. But none of this action can take away the heartbreak I feel for my daughter. My wife and I used to joke that her hippy inclinations are going to lead her to join the Peace Corps someday. We moved here because of a great job opportunity and the fact that our children would be exposed to cultures and experiences that they would never be exposed to in the South. Our daughter is a kind, loving soul, and right now it feels, to her, that the world is crushing her spirit. I refuse to allow her to become a statistic. Please keep us in your thoughts and if you have any advice, we’re all ears.