A few Saturdays ago, my eight year-old daughter—let’s call her Dervish because she whirls—came huffing up to me as I sat with my morning coffee catching up on emails and paperwork that had risen on my desk like an angry blemish.
A client reports: my son (he is sixteen) was offered alcohol by his friend’s parents at their house, last weekend. He told me he felt it would have been rude to decline – ha-ha. The friend’s parents believe that since kids are going to drink anyway, they are happy to have their kid and his friends drink in their home where the boys are safe. I guess that makes sense . . . “
I took my teenage children to see the documentary, “Bully." In the USA, much discussion ensued about whether or not kids under the age of eighteen should be allowed to see a film that depicts actual bully violence, uses foul language and is upsetting to behold. In Canada, common sense seems to have prevailed although at the screening we attended, the audience was comprised of primarily adults. Perhaps, this will change if and when the film goes into wide release. I hope so.
The composer of that playground chant was sadly naive. Name-calling and other forms of non-physical abuse deeply damage victims with wounds that cannot be healed by bandages and aspirin.
Pixie Girl is sixteen, confident, responsible, an easy child to parent. And so, I felt like a piano dropped on my head when she informed me that she wanted to get a stud in her perfect little nose.
