Tag: Punched

Punched, threatened, excluded and humiliated; that was my daughter’s reality at just nine years old.I was sick of watching her slowly destroy my daughter. The worst thing was the lack of support. Teachers would tell me they hadn’t seen anything, everything was fine at school, or even worse, there’s nothing more we can do.

I’d wake with waves of anxiety flooding my body. The guilt of not being able to protect my little girl was immense.She was too fearful to speak up. I began to be known as the mum who always complained.She remained quiet and well-behaved. I got angrier, exhausted and absolutely sick of being intimidated and shamed for speaking up.Thankfully the bullying went too far even by the school’s standards – there was mention of a knife being brought to school the following day. No need to explain that the very next person I spoke to wasn’t the school, wasn’t any of the professionals that had let us down for so long, I phoned the police.Would it actually have happened?

You’d like to think not but even the child’s mum told me she wouldn’t put it past her daughter to do it just to prove a point.  Did things change after that? Yes, but it was temporary. It didn’t take long for the sleepless nights, tummy aches and anxiety to take over our lives again but it did stop eventually, and permanently this time.

It wasn’t any one thing that made the bullying stop and it certainly wasn’t anything the school or the bully did! In a nutshell, it was just that WE had had enough, not in a tired, beaten, frustrated way but in a ‘my boundaries are rock solid and I’ll do what it takes to enforce them’ kind of way.  And in that moment of clarity was what it took to make the bullying stop.  I was beyond hoping the teachers would help. I’d lost complete faith in the adults I had entrusted my daughters care to.

My daughter had learned the hard way that adults aren’t always there to protect you and they don’t always know best!It was Christmas Day evening. The day had been great yet come bedtime my daughter was in tears. Not because she was over excited and tired but because it had dawned on her that she was halfway through the school holidays and we were now on the decline towards the return to school. And she was scared.  

The fear of being bullied is bad enough but to know that you’ve to face that alone because the adults who are meant to look after you aren’t, would be enough to tip anyone over the edge. Something inside of me snapped.  I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even resentful. I was determined.I looked my daughter in the eye and gave her permission to do whatever she needed to do to make this stop. I told her she could hit back if she needed to. I told her she could scream, shout, argue with the teachers, do anything to make sure she was safe at school. And I promised her that no matter what she did, even if the teachers told her off I would back her.

Actually, I told her it would be a good idea to really kick-off because then the teachers might call me into school, and they might start to see how terrified she really was, how much she was hurting.That was the turning point.  Looking back I think that moment was a culmination of things that resulted in my daughter realising her own strength. One reason is that I believed in her ability. She knew I really understood how much others had let her down and how unacceptable that was. She felt how determined I was and that I was completely behind her, 100%, no matter what. She felt heard, understood and ultimately I think she needed permission to not be the good girl who kept putting up with the crap because the adults around her told her she ‘just needed to ignore it’ as if she was making a big deal of nothing.

I tell you what when your child tells you they don’t want to live their life anymore, there are no words. I only wish the teachers had taken us more seriously before it had got to that point.The good news is that we did make the bullying stop and my daughter is thriving. We learned so much from our experience, and for that I am grateful.Through our experience, I recognised the gaping hole where easily accessible, immediate advice and support should have been. So once our lives were back on track I volunteered for a bullying helpline but after 4 years I didn’t feel I was doing enough.

I needed to provide what we had been in desperate need of, and so my business was born, supporting parents in protecting their kids from bullying.  All parents are welcome, whether their child is being bullied, has been bullied, worries about being bullied, or they are the one who is bullying.

I never want to hear of a family so isolated and unsupported that they feel there’s just no option but to put up with it or hide. Bullying is not okay and you know what? The bystanders are just as bad as the bullies! In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”If bullying is something you worry about you can find me and other parents who understand in our free group on Facebook, The Mums Hub (https://www.facebook.com/groups/574353102769101/) , my Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/gemmaehills), or you can email me at contact@gemmahills.com.  No judgement just understanding.