linkage

[deird1]

Signal boost. Because yes, this.

Comments

[kisekileia]

I'm sure that mother means well, but by leaving her son in that school, she's sending the message to him that even the people who say they care the most won't actually do what it takes to keep him safe. She needs to talk to cops and lawyers, and to find another way to educate her son unless/until the situation is resolved in a way that lets him be safe at school.

[menomegirl]

You have obviously not read anything else on Stoney's journal or you wouldn't say a thing like that.

[kisekileia]

I read that entry, because that was what was linked. Are there extenuating circumstances preventing Stoney from pulling her son out of the school or getting legal help?

[menomegirl]

The part of your comment that prompted mine was this: she's sending the message to him that even the people who say they care the most won't actually do what it takes to keep him safe.

I can't even begin to tell you how wrong that assumption is. Stoney is one of the most fiercely protective mothers I know.

[kisekileia]

Why is her son still in the abusive school then? I was a bullied kid, and while support at home helped a lot, I couldn't really recover from my peers' abuse until I was no longer in the abusive environment. Based on what I've lived and what I've observed in others, I believe it is extremely difficult for real recovery from abuse to take place while the abusive situation continues. It meant a lot to me that my parents supported me at home, but ultimately, that wasn't enough to make me feel safe and protected, because I wasn't in fact being protected from the abuse. I didn't feel safe and protected because I wasn't safe and protected. My parents were protective in some ways, but they didn't do what it would have taken to get me out of the toxic class during the worst year of bullying, and I still bear scars from that. I'm speaking from experience when I say that protective sentiments on a parent's part only go so far to help the kid if their kid still isn't actually safe.

[menomegirl]

I completely understand your position and can relate to it. Being bullied is something that takes years to get over, supportive parents or no. I know.

As to your question. I don't feel qualified to answer that because well ... I'm not Stoney. But I can suggest that if you have some free time, please go read some of her entries that are tagged 'my family'. These posts will tell you more than I could.

[lliira]

A whole lot of people do not actually have the money to change schools for their kids. In the U.S., changing schools means sending the kid to a private school or picking up and moving so you're in a different district. In both cases, keeping your fingers crossed that things will be better, not worse. Further, bullying and toxic environments are so incredibly prevalent, moving is absolutely not guaranteed to make anything better. In the United States, I doubt there's anywhere an atheist autistic gay kid is not going to be bullied severely. Because our school culture is one of bullying.

I was bullied terribly in elementary school. I had no friends. Classmates called me "it". The teachers didn't care. We moved from that wealthy school district to a working-class school district and my life got immediately better. That doesn't mean I was never bullied again, though. In fact, I spent three years of high school being sexually harassed, and the teachers continued not to care. I have no idea what might have been different had I stayed in the first school, but there's also no way my parents could have known the second school would be better for me. I still don't know if it was in the long run, what with the sexual harassment. And I was not an unusual kid -- just a semi-geeky straight white girl with a good number of friends.

I remember talking about this with someone from Britain. He said gay parents should be lower on the list for adoption because their kids would be more likely to be bullied. All the USians laughed uproariously. Every single one of us had been bullied severely. He said, basically, "what? Really? That's weird. Never mind, then." It's not possible to escape unless you're homeschooled and hidden from all other children all the time, which has its own set of very large problems and is definitely not something everyone can do anyway.

This is not a problem with one school, and it is not a problem that one mother can solve for her child. It's systemic. And the kind of victim-blaming you're doing is part of the problem.

[kisekileia]

Um, victim-blaming? NO. The victim is the 17-year-old, and I'm not blaming him for anything. What I'm saying is that if the kid is being abused at school, the parents should look at options like homeschooling, or a GED/community college combination such as a commenter on the original post mentioned. Those options aren't perfect, but limited social time with other kids is a whole lot less damaging than severe bullying.

[lliira]

Blaming someone's mother for what other people do to them is, in fact, part of victim-blaming. It's taking the focus off the actual perpetrators, and blaming someone close to that person -- and it's usually Mom who gets blamed -- for what other people do to them.

Parents have a lot less control over what happens to their kids than we like to imagine, and a lot fewer options. The problem here is not the parents. The problem is a society that allows and encourages this stuff to happen. And I see no possible way the cops (as you suggested at first) would even consider bothering with this, as sad as that is. I guess the parents could maybe sue the school district, but that takes money, energy, and time, and likely would end up with a big nothing anyway and stress their kid more.

I'm sure this kid's parents have considered all their options much more thoroughly than a few commenters on the internet have, and are doing what they think is best. I'm sure they know all the pros and cons -- more importantly, I'm sure they know what the kid himself wants. Talking about what they should be doing rather than what we should be doing strikes me as rather missing the point.