Does the title sound familiar? It is. It is the book we have all, at sometime in our lives raising children, read it. The sesame street way of teaching politeness and kindness. Since the beginning of time of Adam and Eve, Eves rights have come a long way.
The rights for women have gone from simple choices at home to working in male dominated careers and juggling a family. But along the way we must have forgotten to teach the kids to be kind and polite. Being mean for girls may look like a very courageous thing to do.
Standing up for oneself and trampling someones rights are not the same. Girls at school these days seem to take offense to all sorts of things, clothes, hair, makeup, boys. Sometimes they just pick on a poor girl just because they can. Telling the school authorities has no impact, as they see it as tattling, they ask the victim to ignore and avoid and put up with it. We all have seen what that does, the sad end to Phoebe Prince, a girl after being relentlessly bullied hanged herself. This is just one incident among many.
The stereotype that bullies are the ones that confront you, throw you into a trash can for not parting with your lunch money is a myth. Bullies come in very subtle and dangerous forms these days. These are mostly girls who seem to care less for others rights and trample on them to get up in the social arena. Being smart and learning to avoid these mean girls does not help. These girls go from being friendly and kind to making up horrible rumors about lesbianism and doing drugs and alcohol addiction. When will this stop.
We now even have a law against bullying. But this law only makes it even harder to catch bullies. The traditional form of bullying is extortion and is always condemned. The new age bullying involves hurting someones feeling, intentionally or otherwise. There are advocates who profess that this law makes teaching morality to children difficult, check this site out and read along as they explore the ramifications of the anti bullying law. Is there anything we can do as parents, yes we can teach our girls(and boys) that being strong and courageous requires one to be kind and treat our fellow beings like we would like them to treat us and may be that will start a revolution, but until then parents like me who have had personal brushes with school bullies hope that their child does not become a statistic. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying/201003/anti-bully-laws-are-violation-the-golden-rule
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying/201006/ten-principles-moral-discipline-introduction