I began this Factoidz article as a post to a thread started in the Parenting Channel. However, my story telling just kept flying from my mind and fingers. However, once I finished I considered that it will fit into the Anti-Bully Campaign as well, so here it is.
“If the bully is ‘bullied’ himself, it might filter down to siblings and if not, to someone at school who is an easy mark.” Marie Coppola
Yes, this is true. I actually watched this happen within a family, that I sort of grew up with them. It does or can filter down as you say. The children are in their 30’s now. Their mother actually spent a small amount of time babysitting me and my siblings, while she was younger.
Case Study:
The mother was a single mother, she was a good person, she had a hard time trying to raise 5 children by herself, the child support laws 30 years ago or more were not either active or existed as they do today. She was a young mother and she worked two jobs trying to keep up with the bills and all things 5 kids may need. Both of the men she had let sweep her off her feet were physically, emotionally, verbally and sexually abusive, at times beating her as though she were another man from a young age. She of course, after wising up, while things were escalating; got her and her kids out since she was concerned for the safety of her children by each of these men, they were alcoholics, the men, not my friend.
Her parents helped her raise the first three; they were doorstep in age formation, so they had a bit of old tyme discipline and care. They learned to mind their manners, be respectful and help the family with what ever their chores may be. She seemed a bit carefree and open in nature with just a smidgen of selfishness that I believe came from having been so young a person to have to stop being a 17 year old and turn into a mother. However, she does love her children. The older ones learned to help well, since they were basically brought up by their grandparents. However, being children, they were children. 2 older girls, and a brother from one marriage and 2 boys from a later marriage, so their ages differed into basically a half a generation.
The middle child was the apple of her eye as well of fondly considered by others. He was a beautiful child as they all were, but his heart song touched everyone. She was pregnant with the 4th child when the middle one disappeared one day, never to be seen again by his family.
They lived on the river in a camp, this 4 year old boy went out to play in the yard as the kids always did, they knew from living there that they were not to go towards the water without an adult present. Investigation did find that there was a strange vehicle and person in that vehicle within the same time frame of the child’s disappearance.
They never found a body, so as any mother would, she had no idea what had happened to him, had a nervous breakdown and I’m not even sure to this day that she really believes that he has passed, since no body was ever recovered by search and rescue even to the mouth of the Mississippi into the ocean they searched.
Of all the things she went through along her way, there was nothing else that broke her spirit like the loss of this child. It took many years before she even began coming out of it or seemed to be returning to her whole self, her children were in their early 20’s or so I suppose before she handled it enough to actually calm down and really be a good and unselfish mother to the others. Although she loved them and supported them, she experienced natural mood swings as well as exaggerated mood swings because of her broken heart.
When the 4th child she was pregnant with was born, in appearances he was very much like the child she had just lost and this one kind of took that place, but not really. However, to extremes, unfortunately, since she does overly dote on this child, even today.
The 5th child was born with some intestinal birth defects that were correctable, sometime while an infant, but not diagnosed and treated until the child was near death and she just forced her way with having a doctor finally listen to her, since they kept thinking that she was starving this child, since he couldn’t not eliminate solid wastes because of the outlet only developing in to a pin-hole size.
When they finally listened to this mother and searched further for the problem after quite heated insistence, they had to remove all but a few inches from his intestines. After that as soon as he ate and he ate all the time, it would go straight through him. This made potty training challenging, for both him and his mother, since he could not feel when he had to go poop.
This child was sickly from the very start, and somewhere along the way, some Dr. told her there may be mental retardation because of the time lapse of his problem and his solution health-wise; while this child was still a small infant, before having the chance to grow and find out. I suppose back then the doctors felt it is best to just give such information, just in case. Who knows…
Unfortunately, at that time this mother was not really herself, she had lost one, and then this child was a bit of a strain on her already heavy load, so she did have a hard challenging struggle to contend with.
This child took more care than any of the other healthy children did. However, being an Aries this child was full of unbridled energy and curiosity. But being the youngest, I do think this is how he learned by plundering and moving things, and of course, he was inside and outside as children will go. This of course, caused problems of finding things for her when she needed them.
Somewhere along the time that he began walking and getting into things, she has already got caught up in a negative means of disciplining or trying to control her children.
Since as time went along with no father staying in the picture, she tried to discipline them and unfortunately, this meant going a bit overboard with physical discipline yet not so much a controlled and thoughtful type of discipline. Some times these choices included using anything she could get her hands on to hit with, since she was already worn thin.
Eventually, these children learned to do the same thing to one another and since the 2 girls were a bit older than the 2 younger boys, many times they had to take care of them after school until their mother got off from her 2nd job. This was the way momma handled them, this is the way they handled the boys. And the older of the boys being healthy and much bigger than the youngest, he followed suit until this younger one got the crap beat out of him all the time, from any which way he turned.
Now, the mother did make the older boy leave the younger alone when she was around because it had turned into a bit of a bully technique with the older boy. I suppose since she really was and is a good person, she had just suffered so and did the best she knew to do. She didn’t really want this bigger boy to turn into a bully especially against this sickly smaller child as he had a health risk factor.
She also had a problem of opening her mouth and flinging all sorts of messages as some will do when upset. Unfortunately, one of these messages to the youngest is that he is retarded. Over and over through the years anytime he would get into trouble just by being a little boy.
Even as a young teen, I knew this wasn’t a good thing for this child, I’d watched him and sometimes babysat on weekends when she would go out to the clubs to relax; and he seemed like a normal child, except for the results of his birth defect. (I have always been a major observer of others).
One summer vacation when I was about 18 - 19 years old, I went to live with them to watch the kids while she worked. One morning she had gotten up early and left for work, me and the girls were up fixing breakfast in the kitchen and she busted in the door hollering and screaming about her sunglasses. The kids went immediately to searching for them, I went back in the kitchen to finish up. I overheard one of them tell her this little boy had been playing with them. She went to screaming at him and when it seemed to be a bit much for my senses, I rinsed my hands and walked into the living room.
This younger boy was probably 7 or 8 but in appearance he was most similar in size to a 4 or 5 year old very fragile thin, petite child. When I turned the corner, I was in total shock, a teen and unsure what to do at that time as far as physically reaching out and taking a hold of her. She had this child by the shoulders literally shaking the dickens out of him and screaming at him. The child’s eyes were dazed with a slack appearance to his face that was white as a sheet, to be quite honest at that time I wasn‘t even sure if he were breathing. (This was many years before shaken baby syndrome would be recognized)
When I found my voice, all I could calmly say with a bit of alarm, but not shouting over her, was ‘Jane Stop!’ She immediately jerked away and stood straight up and then looked at me, told me she was already late for work and then she left storming out the door.
As soon as she left I took the boy in my arms and sat down on the couch with him, the others of course, gather around. I calmed him down since he did have a delayed response of sobbing. Once I had him calmed down, I asked him if he remembered playing with mamma’s sunglasses and he nodded. I ask him if he knew where they were, he nodded. I ask him if he could go get them for me and he high-tailed it out of the backdoor. I stood at the door watching him as he went to the pump house and picked up the glasses and brought them back to me. I washed and polished them and then sat them where she could find them. If she had simply turned to him and calmly asked him to get them, he would have most likely went to get them for her right then.
He seemed ok the rest of the day and evening until going to bed before she came home. During the day; however, the oldest girl and I talked for just a bit, long enough for me to get the info I wanted without seeming to pressure her or make her uncomfortable. She was about 13 I think, we were already close. And she seemed to be relieved to be able to talk to someone about the situations and she knew she could trust me not to have any repercussions of talking to me come back on her. And I was old enough to at least give her some comfort in wording and thoughts that I do believe helped her at least to get it all out.
She basically told me that although, the mother did spank the little one that she was afraid of spanking him for fear of something happening since he was so sickly and taken to the doctor as required and she didn’t want to worry about bruising, that she would most often shake the boy rather than hit him.
Later after she came home and the two of us were sitting talking as we always did, she brought the situation up and then cried about it and such.
I told her how he looked when I came into the room and that she really needed to consider something else rather than shaking him. How his face looked and his coloring as well as the slackness in his face. I honestly, do not know whether she realized that this was his reaction and that she may be causing him harm. I think that she was so caught up in her own troubled feelings while shaking this child that maybe she saw red and was not coherently focused on the child’s reaction. I think at these times she just tripped into a frenzy and eventually had to learn to calm herself without throwing a bitch fit with anyone, especially her kids.
I do not think that she realized that she was actually a bully. I think that she just learned along the way that she could get more attention as well as getting what she wanted by throwing such hissy-fits, since she did stick with this type of pattern for years.
I did do my best as a younger person along these years, to explain to this woman 13 years older than I was that she shouldn’t tell him that he was retarded all the time, she never listened until she came out of her funk, by then it was too late for this boy. I had told her at those times, that children will believe anything their parents tell them about themselves and that if she was not careful that she could damage something that may not already be damaged. That he acted and seemed natural to me and she should stop, without my actually coming out and telling her to stop.
This boy grew up believing he was terribly retarded, because of the in-home bullying that filtered on through all his school years. He did have some slight learning disabilities; however he was not even mildly retarded. He suffered terribly low self-esteem and basically what I consider brainwashing as far as retardation goes.
I can honestly say; however, that although this child went through some depressingly hard times that he never ever showed the tendencies of a bully, he was a sweet thoughtful child and he still is as a man. He finally left home, got a job as a welder and he is one of the finest and since he’s such a little fellow he fits in places that others can’t fit into to weld. He still suffers from low self-esteem in some ways; however, he is bright and smart enough to be handy while fixing electronics and such.
He did not allow the hardness of his life cause him to want to hurt others. He is helpful and will go out of his way to help others, he broke the bully cycling of his family. He is a kind and respectful person to all he meets, he deserves a good life from here on out if I have any say about it…
His mother has calmed down in her life and reactions, as she got older, she also got medical counseling and treatment and is much easier to deal with as well as her not being so strung out nerve-wise. The oldest girl is happily married to a guy that thinks she hung the moon, she thinks the same of him they have children and grandchildren. The younger girl suffered from making a bad choice of someone to love and he abused her as well, she works as a welder and has two children. I’ve never seen or heard tell of either of these girls being abusive to anyone. The older boy, well, he is still momma’s baby and is just now learning that, that may be ok, but he’s not getting away with the power plays. Unfortunately, this boy has had episodes of being abusive.
© 2009 Sara Valor
