What are YOU doing?

*Forgive any spelling errors. I don't know what happened but they seemed to have removed spellcheck or something*

I have The Talk on in the background at work. They're talking about the Quaden Bayles, little boy from Australia with Dwarfism who had been being bullied. His mom videotaped him saying he wanted to die. The video had gone viral recently. Marie Osmond mentioned a friend who lost her child to suicide recently, who found all these notes stuffed under her kid's bed that had words like- "kill yourself", "die loser", etc.

Then they talked about bullying and how it needs to stop.

All these news outlets have talked about this one bullied kid that went viral and how celebrities have come out in support of him and people donated all this money to him. That's great. But that's ONE kid. Do you know how many more kids are being bullied on a daily basis? I'm happy this kid is now has hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to Disney in a GoFundMe account but what is being taught in every household in America to stop this kind of behavior??

A lot of the bullying happens online. Okay- how do we remedy that one? Well, at least in elementary to or through middle school, we don't NEED TO GIVE KIDS SMARTPHONES. There are so many other options to be able to get in touch with or GPS your kids if need be.

E doesn't have any smartphone, which I've discussed in Facebook groups and message boards ad nauseum, because I don't think kids- tweens, teens, etc need smart phones. My personal feeling. Nothing good is coming of it, because parents are just handing them over like loaded guns, with no supervision. They're just letting them have social media accounts before they know how to handle them. We just gave E an iPod Touch so he can use Garage Band. That thing is locked down to where he could barely look up Sesame Street and the whole thing shuts down after an hour. At first, the security was so strong, I locked myself out of it.

B and I have a music Instagram account for E, for professional purposes. He only sees it if we show it to him or ask him to write something for it that WE post. He never even looks at it unless there's a comment we choose to show him. B listened to all these podcasts that said if E is going to try out for shows like America's Got Talent (which he did), they say he needs to have all these social media accounts in place first. But that doesn't mean we have to let him on them! He doesn't rule us- we rule him! That's the beauty of parenting! WE rule!

Parents aren't checking. They're not. Unless you know you're going to be checking, just don't go there. You know how many parents I know who told me when they were giving their kid a smartphone that they were TOTALLY GOING TO BE CHECKING, putting parental controls on, blah blah blah....yet, when it came time, did a WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING? Yep. Most of 'em. Because you get complacent. They're like, eh, my kid isn't really going to do anything. UNTIL THEY DO.

So, okay, *I* don't believe they NEED it but you do and you're the parent. Fine. If you're going to insist they need it you just want to give them a smart phone, make sure you're reading all their texts, looking at all their stuff. No, they don't get privacy. There is no such thing. It's YOURS. You pay for it, it's YOURS. Say it with me.... It's YOUR responsibility to be checking. It's up to you to have the conversations. Check in once a day, once a week, once a month- whatever it is- and talk about their behavior online. I guarantee if you're REALLY checking, you may not see things that are shocking or awful from/by your own kid, but bet your behind you see it from or by one of their friends!

A lot of the time, these are the same people who just handed their kid a smartphone with no restrictions are the ones who have side eyed me for years for letting/making E watch the news and know what's going in the world. Or let him listen to Howard Stern. Or hear me say a curse word. Or think it's weird and hysterical that he and I watch General Hospital. Well, guess what? General Hospital over the years has been the springboard to some awesomely deep conversation. Especially in terms of how to treat people.

With or without General Hospital though, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HOW TO TREAT PEOPLE. I don't know what in the actual hell is being talked about in a lot of homes, but I really don't think common courtesy is a typical topic. I've seen the stuff adults I grew up with have written, publicly, on social media, like using old school homophobic slurs, not even used to describe an actual homosexual person, or act, but using it the way one would've used it in the 80's - just as a derogatory term. As in- "X, that f'ing ******". So if people my age are still throwing out that terminology as a "nasty insult" to someone, I can only imagine that they're not stopping to have conversations with their kids about how to treat their peers with kindness and respect. I could be wrong I guess, but I feel like that assumption is correct. By the way, my heart almost stopped when I saw that the other day. THE OTHER DAY. WHO USES THAT F WORD TO DESCRIBE SOMEONE IN 2020?!

Plus, I see it with kids in general. Just incidents of kids not being good friends. One telling another they're not going to be invited to their birthday party- when they're old enough to know that's a hurtful thing to say. Or leaving a friend somewhere to see if there's someone "better" to play with. Even early boy/girl drama of finding out a friend likes a boy and trying to be that boy's girlfriend on purpose. No, of course you can't control who likes whom, and all this is just a right of passage, but JEEZ LOUISE, is anyone's mom talking to their girl about being a girl's girl?? Even Rita talked to me about that stuff. Or told me stories where I inferred who was the a-hole in the situations she told me about. It's never too early to talk about that! Even E learned about that on on GH between with the Lulu/Dante/Brook Lyn triangle.

Are parents claiming they're too busy to have these conversations? Do they think their kids are too young to talk about what it means to be a good person? A good friend? It ISN'T true that all we need to know we learned in Kindergarten. Because now, in Kindergarten, they're too busy being stuffed with academics. So we have to do our JOBS as PARENTS and teach our OWN children how to act like human beings and treat people nicely.

I'm not just talking the talk either. I'm not saying I'm the most awesome parent in all of the land, better than anyone else. I'm not going to give you a list of all my F-ups. I mean, I'm a Leo, so of course, I don't really believe I F up all that often. But seriously, it's not a competition. I'm not saying I should get the big piece of chicken. What I can totally say is that I *am* having these conversations. I think many people are forgetting to have these conversations. Or they're focusing on other priorities- academics, sports, classes, activities. They're "too busy".

When E leaves the house, we used to say, "Yelp Reviews". What that means is that every time he leaves he's representing our family and we want good reviews coming back to us. Behave. Be kind. Be helpful. Be respectful. Be NICE. Not difficult concepts. And we get those reviews. Moms that I don't know, finding me on Facebook, to tell me E played with their preschooler or Kindergarten kid on the playground, making their day. We tell him every time so he knows he's doing the right thing and that behavior is positively reinforced. So nature or nurture, he's a NICE person. 

E's not perfect. Obviously no one is perfect. No kid is perfect. But, I know for a fact that he's a nice person. We've talked about what it means to be a nice person. How to show sympathy and how to have empathy. How to look for kids who might be sad or lonely. To notice if someone might not have anyone to sit with or play with. To take the initiative to introduce himself to people who are new or shy.

And if we got a report, or more than one, that he was a dick, he'd be in major trouble. I wouldn't be saying- "Not my kid!" He's been told that too. He's also been told that while we always want him to do well in school, be a reader, get good grades, I'll always care more that I find out or hear that teachers, parents, and peers think he's a good person. I told him this yesterday on the way to swim practice.

None of this is brain surgery. I'm watching Dr. Phil right now. This episode is about a fourteen year old who bullies his parents - physically, verbally, and mentally because he's addicted to video games. He's decided to stop showering and going to school because he's on the couch all day on screens. He's fourteen. How did he get to that point? Well, clearly, no one was having any conversations on how to act prior to this intervention. Clearly, they have other things going on as well. Dad calls mom a fat bitch sometimes when he's angry. This is an extreme case or it wouldn't be on TV. But the simple fact is that there probably weren't a lot of conversations going on with this kid about the appropriate way to speak to anyone prior to ending up on Dr. Phil.

By the way, E loves some Dr Phil. Another way to springboard some great conversations. He was watching the above mentioned episode with me.

We NEED to be having conversations with our kids. Not JUST about grades. Not JUST about sports. Not JUST about sex. Not JUST about drugs. But JUST about being nice, good, kind people. How to check to see if a friend seems sad. Not to be a social climber- meaning, not to ditch one friend for someone who seems cooler. Not to leave your friend somewhere- a party, a sports event, a dance, etc to meet up with other people or because they want to stay and you don't. That they need to work it out together, and one of them is going to be annoyed, but they don't leave each other. You come together, you leave together. Pay attention when your friend talks. Look each other in the eye. Don't let anyone talk crap about your friends to you. Stand up for people who seem to need it- who can't stand up for themselves. If you hear someone being a dick, say something. So on and so forth.

THEY DON'T JUST KNOW THIS STUFF WITHOUT BEING TAUGHT OR TOLD.