My two cents on bullying

All this talk in the media about bullying and kids who are berated for being gay has gotten my attention. A lot has changed since I was a teenager. No one would have dared admit being gay or lesbian. Forget transgender -- we didn't every know what transgender meant, much less not tease someone who identified this way. My oldest daughter is a junior in high school. It was about her 8th grade year that we started noticing the kids coming out. By 10th grade, everyone knew what everyone was. Her various friends identify in every way you can imagine: lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, you name it. I've really never worried about it too much; we live in a pretty liberal town after all.

But our pretty liberal town made national headlines a couple weeks back though, and it wasn't for football. It was because a student at University of Michigan, the student body president, an openly gay man, was being harassed by a public official of the state of Michigan. The student, after months of being harassed, finally filed in local court to have a restraining order brought against the official. The university moved to have the official, an alum of the law school no less, banned from university property. Here's a video of Anderson Cooper interviewing the official, followed by a video of Anderson interviewing the student:

Wow. It's like something straight out of my adolescence. I remember all the things me and my peers said casually, never even thinking about what the effect of our words might be:

"He's so gay and he's trying to get everyone else to be gay too!"

or

"Don't be so gay!"

or

"I think she's a lesbian, you know? I'd stay away from her in the locker room.
She's probably trying to get other girls to go lesbian too!"

Yikes. I'm glad to put those days behind me. I'm glad my friends who eventually came out don't hold my words against me today.

But we're not teenagers anymore, we're parents. So let's talk about parenting. Let's talk about our role in this whole thing. How do you raise a kid not to be a bully? How do make sure your kid isn't bullied? These are the immediate questions that come to our mind, right? How do I make sure my kid is ok?

I think these questions are the first ones we want to address. But once I've established that my kid isn't a bully or being bullied, I don't think I'm done parenting on this issue. I think I have to go one step further. I think I have to teach my children how to stop the bullying, how to stand up for their friends, how to make this whole ugly chapter end. Here's a start of what I did with my oldest daughter.

When she was in middle school, the insults started. She'd come home and report on what was going at school. She'd tell stories that included things like this:

"I mean, all the kids we're calling him gay, of course he got mad!"

or

"So then, things got really ugly. All the girls were in the bathroom and so-and-so
accused her of being a lesbian. She was really mad."

or

"She's a tranny, everyone knows it! It's just the truth,
so what difference does it make if we say it?"

Whew.

My instinctual reaction as a parent in this situation was to question whether it's legitimate for the kids to call someone gay or a lesbian or a transgendered person. I mean, there's no need to insult someone just because you want to be mean. But pretty quickly I realized there was something much more important to teach my daughter. Why is it an insult to say someone is a gay or a lesbian or a transgendered person? If it's true, should the person still be insulted or embarrassed or scared? I realized the important thing I needed to teach my daughter is that gay or lesbian or transgender or bi is nothing to be ashamed of. The very nature of these words as insults should be something my child finds odd. These words just describe the differences between people.

Think of it this way. I would faint if I heard of all the kids in the bathroom accusing a girl of being half-black. Or if they cornered a boy and threatened to ruin his reputation by revealing that his mother was Jewish or Hispanic. My immediate reaction would be to teach my child that discrimination against someone based on their ethnic heritage is dead wrong. We have to get to the point where discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity shocks us in the same way. I'm not saying racial discrimination doesn't exist or doesn't matter, I'm just saying that we are quicker to identify it as wrong. The N-word is still more offensive than "fag," as evidenced by the fact that I can include the word fag in this post, but not the N-word.

Yes, teach your children to trust you and to have a positive self esteem; this will help them not become the victim of bullying.

Yes, teach your children compassion and a healthy sense of humility; this will help them understand that being a bully is wrong.

Beyond this, teach them to stand up to bullies and to support others when they are being discriminated against. If we are able to have our children learn this while they are young, maybe they will grow up in a world where bullying is archaic and old-fashioned.

Where do you like it?

Are you in the know? I'm guessing since most parents of little'uns and school-age kids are Gen X-ers that many readers of the blog are on facebook. Which means that you're privy to the latest trends in savvy cyber-movements. Like how last year during breast cancer awareness month (October), we gals all told the world what color the bra was that we were wearing. It was clever, with each woman just putting a single word on her facebook status, like "black" or "pink," and then not letting out the secret of what it was. After a few days, everyone (including the men) picked up on it and the initiative got enough attention to merit national reporting. If you haven't noticed it yet, this year we're telling everyone where we like to put our purse by using a sentence in the form of "I like it [locative prepositional phrase]," for instance, "I like it on the staircase," or "I like it on the floor, in the cushy carpeting in front of my fireplace." Provocative, no? All this titillating cleverness used in order to bring awareness to breast cancer.

I didn't participate in the "color of your bra" campaign and I won't post anything like "I like it somewhere" this month. I'm not willing to risk my image in that way. And I'm not sure it does any good.

There's something about the whole thing that I can't put my finger on...

Last week my oldest daughter's best friend asked via her facebook status "what's with all these 'I like it in the...' statuses?" Two comments later she got her answer, to which she replied, "I'm already informed enough about breast cancer." BINGO. That's what gets to me about the whole thing. I feel like I've been flooded with good feelings and smiles about being "aware" of breast cancer. Yet I do nothing to help find a cure. I do nothing to make a difference at all.

My ex-husband's mother had breast cancer 20 years ago. She survived. Now she's got stage 4 lung cancer. It's not so tragic for me at this point in my life, but it's the way I first became "aware" of breast cancer. She's my oldest daughter's grandmother, so it still indirectly affects me long after my divorce from her son.

One of my sisters-in-law just got a mammogram with a suspicious lump. She's 44. She's going to have a piece of it biopsied shortly. Now I'm even more aware.

On the general cancer front, a friend just got news last week that her husband's colon cancer has metastasized and now it's in his lung. More surgery, more chemo, more heartache. He's 40. And last Thursday night, a cousin who I've known my whole life lost his battle with cancer. He was 70. A co-worker's partner has had most of his right calf removed and he's still not out of the woods.

If you're like me, none of this is so remarkable. Cancer is everywhere around us. Some people win the battle, some people don't. Still, it keeps coming and we still don't have a great way of fighting it. The treatment is still, kill a lot of cells and hopefully the cancerous ones won't survive. And hopefully no new ones will learn how to grow, go forth and multiply.

I think I've become apathetic towards cancer "awareness." The pink ribbons make me feel good and cozy, even though I'm not doing anything. I don't even know who Susan "race for the cure" what's-her-face is. Since no one REALLY close to me has suffered from cancer yet, I carry around a sense of naive immunity, like it will never affect me directly since it hasn't yet. It's a rather irrational line of thinking, yet it keeps me from having to face an ugly truth: Cancer is with us and the situation is bad.

So this October, I'm trying to find something out about the whole cause, the campaign to raise money to find a cure for breast cancer. Feeling good inside when I see pink spatulas on sale at Meijer is not going to cut it, I don't think. For any readers out there who are passionate about this thing, please give me more info, something I can sink my teeth into. Because really, I fear I'm am the middle-aged version of my daughter's best friend: trying to smile and get past the month without facing the ugly truth, trying to convince people that "I'm already informed enough about breast cancer."

Wordless Wednesday: Avoid the flu of the pigs

Avoiding the piggie flu

It was a problem that didn't have a perfect solution. And the information needed to make a decision regarding the solution was ever-changing. Enter stage right: swine flu.

See, I'm already messing up. It's politically incorrect to call the virus "swine flu." Poor pigs. Ok, then. H1N1. It doesn't really matter, though, right? The new, more technical name still causes panic in people.

The problem was how to keep everyone safe and healthy, especially those most at risk in our household, my 3-month-old baby and me.

Our household, minus our youngest member, we all got the H1N1 vaccine last Thursday. The critical at-risk population that qualified us all to get it was that the wee 3-month-old in our household was at risk and not able to receive the vaccination. Since the only way to prevent her from getting the virus was for her never to encounter it, everyone in the household could to be vaccinated.

I've had my reservations about this whole thing. It's a brand new vaccine. What if something went wrong? What if I got the vaccine and I got sick or debilitated and couldn't take care of the baby? What about my older daughter? I don't want her to have some strange reaction to a vaccine. How would I feel then? Still, there were no reports of people suffering from the vaccine...and there WERE reports of babies getting the piggie flu and being dead 24 hours after diagnosis. One of those babies was in my state of Michigan. I couldn't get it out of my head: what if MY baby got the flu accidentally and died? How stupid and foolish would I feel for not going ahead and having everyone in our household protected against the virus?

Normally I'm not a person who is an alarmist. I take the wide angle lens to examine the world and try not to jump to hasty decisions. When swine flu hit the US last spring, back when I was just a pregnant woman with asthma, I didn't worry too much. Sure, all flu strains result in death for a few, but I always sought medical attention when needed. Surely if I caught the bug, me and my growing baby in utero would eventually be fine.

The effects of the pandemic abated in the US over the summer. That was when the news hit about pregnant women being particularly susceptible to the fatal effects of this flu. The way I heard the guarded warnings in the news was like this: You shouldn't worry unless you are pregnant (I was) or if you are asthmatic (I am). Even if you are in one of those groups, don't worry too much because it's summer. Where the swine flu is really spreading right now is in the southern hemisphere, where it is the dead of winter. So really you're not at risk unless you travel to South America, like Brazil, or if you live with someone who recently has. Oops. My husband was in Brazil at the time. But we beat the odds and I didn't encounter anyone who seemed symptomatic. Groovy. The baby was born without so much as a hint of a flu-like symptoms on my part.

Then, just about the same time I was breathing a sigh of relief for no longer being pregnant and potentially being exposed to the virus every week due to my many medical appointments, the flu season reared its ugly head here in the northern part of the northern hemisphere. The promised vaccine was slow in coming. When I called the pediatrician's office, I heard a pre-recorded message before I could reach a live person: "If this a life-threatening emergency, hang up and dial 911. If you are calling to inquire about vaccination against the flu for your child, we are not scheduling appointment since our supply has not yet arrived..." ...and the recorded voice trailed off into a slew of conditionals and apologetics. I started getting a little more nervous. Maybe this thing WAS something I should worry about. The most likely groups to catch the flu? Teenagers and those on colleges campuses (that covers my older daughter and my husband). Those most at risk? Those whose respiratory systems aren't strong, like very young infants and asthmatics (that covers my baby daughter and me). I thought, we're screwed. My immunologist's office didn't have the vaccine at all and had no idea when it was coming. The county announced a free vaccination clinic; all the doses available were accounted for in the first hour when those who had already been waiting for 4-5 hours were assigned numbers. As a result, the county canceled the three remaining clinics scheduled in order to avoid similar panic-driven chaos.

Finally, the county announced a county-wide mass vaccination clinic held at one of the local university's large arenas. 4000 doses of the vaccine available. 10a-7p, one day only. I showed up at 9a with the baby, aiming to get wristbands (required to enter the building and to receive a vaccine) for me, my husband, and my older daughter. I was successful...and spent the next four hours in line. With the baby. Surrounded by hundreds of other people in a confined space. My husband ended up having to cancel his classes for the day in order to get his shot. I took my older daughter in the evening after the school day was over and she had completed swim practice. The whole time I was there with her, she kept saying, "this is JUST like I Am Legend. Maybe we'll all turn into ZOMBIES!" I told her to keep it down and not to incite panic. By the time we got home, it was far past dinner time. We raced through reheated leftovers and finally finished at about 9:30p.

But. The point is. We got our swine flu vaccines.

Wasn't the whole point of vaccinating against this virus so that the normal flow of activity in the country wouldn't be disrupted? I feel like there's some irony in here somewhere.

My Olympic Sacrifice

I would like to offer some parental insight, some morsel of advice you haven’t heard before, but instead what I’ve got for you is this:

Michael Phelps.

Matt Grevers.

Aaron Peirsol.

Yes, girls, I’m in deep. I am absolutely exhausted because—imagine—NBC has the nerve to air the Olympic events live, which means that I am up until almost midnight waiting to see our American boys swim. I keep planning to TIVO it—just go to sleep and let the TV do the work. (Truly, I just like saying TIVO. What I mean is that I can tape it, yes, tape—that ancient but highly effective and inexpensive technology.) It only makes sense. Tape tonight, watch tomorrow. But no. I sit through the gymnastics or beach volleyball or whatever—all of which I like, but, truly, I am here for the swimming—and then can’t seem to click the tiny little button that turns that bright screen OFF.

Please note that this is extremely unusual at my house. It’s the other people who live here who watch television. Don’t misunderstand--there are plenty of TV shows I enjoy, there just aren’t any that I watch on a regular basis. I can’t seem to find the time. I’m well aware that this makes me a bit odd; with three boys I have plenty of reminders.

Sports, however, are an exception, the Olympics in particular. I can remember watching as a child, way back when, and being entranced by Nadia Comaneci. That dates me, I know, but I was as amazed by her then as I am by the young men and women today. I’ve been an athlete for as long as I can remember, and have always been intrigued at the depth of these young men and women. It’s a life I can’t imagine, one totally dedicated to a single pursuit.

Watching and cheering will keep me up at least until midnight for the next week or so, but that seems little sacrifice compared to theirs. Go USA!