Bullying brings up unspoken personal battles

The writing on the tile wall, large letters scrawled in red ink, seemed as much as cry for help as a warning:

“I’m so tired of being bullied. Tomorrow, I’m bringing a gun & shooting everyone and everything in my way.”

A photo of the graffiti quickly circulated on social media feeds this week, with local residents warning it had been discovered at Golden Valley High School in Merced. That was not the case. Parents of Golden Valley students received a voice message from Principal Kevin Smartwood advising them the photo came from a school in Bakersfield.

“There is no threat posted at Golden Valley High School, and your child is safe to be in school,” Smartwood said in the message.

While there is some comfort in learning this case was not local, I can’t help but wonder about the person who wrote it. Are they OK? What sort of bullying could have pushed them to this point? What can we, as parents in Merced, do to help our own children recognize and stop bullying before it builds up and explodes?

Jenna Nunes, program coordinator for the Merced nonprofit agency, Sierra Vista & Child Family Services, saw the posting on her Facebook feed and said she was not surprised.

“Working in the mental health field, that statement didn’t come as a shock to me,” she said. “We see those statements being made.”

As part of its mission to promote mental health and well-being, the agency works with schools to help children not only understand bullying, but to develop social skills to better communicate with their peers and others. They also work with parents and teachers to help them see opportunities to model positive behavior to children around them.

As adults, we need to check our own behavior and ask ourselves what messages we’re sending out. Are we quick to erupt in road rage? Do we curse at our neighbors or spouses? Do we bad-mouth co-workers or strangers behind their backs?

“Parents play a No. 1 role in helping to decrease such behavior or to keep it going,” Nunes said. “Kids are sponges, and they really listen to what their parents are saying and talking about.”

In an age when school shootings, tragically, have become a real threat, it is understandable the image from the Bakersfield school would go viral. As parents, students and teachers well know, we must live prepared for the unthinkable. When I was a student, we practiced “duck and cover,” as much as for earthquake preparedness as for the Cold War nightmare we quietly feared. Today my sons have lockdown drills and their teachers are trained to watch for trouble brewing in the young minds of those seated before them.

Recently, I was reminded that bullying is not restricted to playgrounds.

Last week, a small envelope postmarked from Sacramento appeared in my home mailbox. It had no return address. Inside, a message printed out on plain paper declared that while my home wasn’t the “most despicable” in the neighborhood, it was “ONE of the most despicable.”

In an unfiltered tirade of capital letters and exclamation points, the writer fumed that I had not properly tended to my lawn. He or she somehow knew I was a renter and declared that I lacked respect for the home-owning neighbors around me. My lack of lawn attention indicated I was “someone we are all leery of,” and, thus, the writer had to protect him/herself with anonymity.

I was stunned. OK, I’m not the best gardener but, after a hard, hand-pulling session of weeding, I’d been thinking the lawn finally looked pretty good.

I read the strange letter while sitting in my car, my 7-year-old son seated behind me. I looked at the postdate and realized it had been sent the week prior, in fact, on the last of three days I’d spent sick in bed. Being knocked out ill, I’d missed my weekend chance to tend to the landscaping work that is impossible during my workweek.

I can be stoic when needed, but there’s no faster way to hurt me than to poke at my role as a mom. You see, I’m a solo parent – a full-time working mom of three, living in a new city where we have no relatives to help out. As other solo parents will know, it’s a hard load to carry and one that has few, if any, breaks. The criticism of my lawn suddenly brought up all of the complex emotions that are part of life as a single parent. Before I knew it, small tears flowed down my cheek. From the back seat, my young son asked what was wrong and I shared the truth.

Then, he asked, “Well, isn’t it better that they wrote without signing their name? Maybe they didn’t want to hurt you?”

No, I said. And, in any case, they did hurt me. And, in talking about it with my first-grader, I realized this felt like bullying.

If you have something to say to someone, you should be able to say it to them directly, I said. The person who found my home “despicable” missed a chance to learn about me and my family, to learn I’d been sick, that I work long hours during the week and that I haven’t bought a lawn mower yet because we’re still recovering from having lost nearly everything we owned last year when our moving van was ransacked.

Had the letter writer met me, shook my hand and looked in my eyes, he or she likely would have gained a friend. Instead, I find myself wondering about the writer. Is it that woman looking at my home as she drives by? Or that man who walks his dog without returning my greeting?

Whether it’s by anonymous stamped letter or snarky text typed out on a cellphone, it is all too easy to blindly shoot out daggers with little concern for where or how deeply they land. As parents, we need to be examples for our children. We need to look for the opportunities to connect with one another and to build friendships, not fear.

I’m reminded of a saying attributed to Ian MacLaren, the pseudonym of the Rev. John Watson, a 19th-century Scottish writer, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

I hope these are words that will be embraced by the schoolmates of that student in Bakersfield. I hope they are words my children will remember as they find friends in our new hometown. I hope they are words that will be practiced by us all.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Bullying brings up unspoken personal battles."