I was 10 years old at primary school when the taunting started. Someone decided that it would be funny to pick a feature on my face, my lips and tease me about them, calling me ‘rubber lips’. Others joined in, including my friends, rhymes were made, and the teasing and ridicule of 34 years ago still brings tears to my eyes when I recall it.
I know now, as an adult that those children meant no harm, that they didn’t understand how that phrase affected the confidence I had in myself and my appearance years later, but it did…… and it does.
I am sharing this part of my story during #antibullyingweek as a parent of two teenage boys to illustrate how the wounds of the past all those years ago can inadvertently be reopened in the present.
The phrase ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me’ is wildly inaccurate and wholly misleading.
Was I too sensitive for letting these children impact me in this way?
Should I have toughened up and ignored them?
Who knows? I am not tough, I am sensitive (which makes me good at the work I do today) and I have let it affect me in the present.
Those opened wounds, they are vulnerable to pain every single time my boys are with their friends,
When one of them decides not to go out and prefers to stay in;
- Is it because they are not welcome or not invited to go out with their friends?
When my son is on his phone and all the other boys are chatting and laughing;
- Do they think he is anti-social?
When I observed seemingly harmless banter between friends;
- Is that laughter directed his way harming him more than is evident?
I am hypersensitive and hypervigilant as a parent, and sometimes it truly cripples me mentally and emotionally.
I know children and young people hit out when they are hurting, but I desperately don’t want it to be my children in the firing line. This, however, is not something I can control, especially during the teenage years.
So, I have to release my grip, even though that is the scariest thing I have ever done, and continually remind myself that my children are not me, they are not my lived experiences, and I must not, will not project my hurt from the past on their friendship groups, social situations, and choices they make.
I believe that this is the hardest thing which we as parents have to learn to do, to separate us from them. If we don’t, we risk getting tangled up in their lives, creating dramas where there aren’t any, or struggling to address bullying issues with calm and perspective as memories and triggers from our own childhood come flooding in.
So, my message to you today is this;
There are parts of us which will be reignited inadvertently by own children’s experiences often in unexpected and unpredictable ways. In many of these situations, self-awareness is half the battle, to give us the space to recognise what is ours, and what is theirs. And if you are having to deal with a difficult situation related to your young person, recognising this can make a massive difference to how you manage and navigate the tough times and how you show up for your child as their parent not the child of your past.
Love Clare x