Kindness is NOT the answer: The problem of bullying (Part 1)

As children are dying of bullying, are we demanding the wrong thing?

Part 1

It has recently occurred to me that perhaps we are asking too much of people, especially our children, when we ask them to be kind. Maybe our message is wrong and this is why we are failing. We are all failing at kindness. Perhaps this is why our children are being bullied to the point that suicide seems to them like the better option.

Mothers like to fantasize that each morning when they drop their kids off at school, they are dropping them off to a fluffy, pink world where kindness reigns, walking the hallways giving out yummy candy hearts all day, tirelessly, never resting. We like to think our kids and the ones around them, spend their days being kind, because their parents have parented them right and all kids are balls of empathy that know that the only option is kindness. There is the realistic part of us that knows this is not true but, there is a bigger part that needs this fantasy. We need that fantasy to be able to happily chirp “Have a good day in school” each morning and drive away. We need that fantasy to get through our day. We have to believe, we need to believe, as we see their little backs and sometimes big backs being swallowed by even bigger doors that there is a pink, fluffy world behind those doors.

I am rudely awakened from my fantasy when, inevitably, one of my three children gets into the car at pickup looking crestfallen and relates an incident that happened that day, an insult, a bullying incident or just an unkind interaction. Each time I am shocked. That other child was “not kind”. I feel let down by mommies and daddies everywhere; did they not give their child the memo about kindness? Kindness should be everyone’s priority at every moment. We need to be exchanging candy hearts all day. I am so overwhelmed by my disappointment, I am easily unnerved by the driver in front of me who has failed to respond to the green light for the last ten seconds. I slam on my horn and wave my hands at the driver, motioning them to move forward, and mouth “What the heck?”

Kindness in our household is basically my children’s only chore. It is the only responsibility they know they have, besides always trying their best. My husband is often frustrated by the fact that my children do not have chores. I do not make them put away their dishes, or make their beds, or do the laundry. In my mind that is not their job. I do not feel that chores will correlate with the type of people they will be in this world. These specific responsibilities will be theirs later when they are responsible for their own lives and one day, hopefully, their own children’s lives but right now they have three tasks as far as I see it. The first two are be kind and always do your best out in the world. I do not tell them they must succeed at everything they do but I do tell them that they must try their best and they must be kind doing it and lastly, they must hold themselves accountable for both.

My kids and I have come up with a ritual for when they come home hurt about some kid’s unkindness.

Read Part 2 of Kindness is NOT the answer