Bullying over the last few weeks has come to the forefront of American debate. It started at the end of October when a Texas parent called foul after their son’s high school team lost 91-0. It gained more steam last week as more information came out about the Miami Dolphin’s locker situation.
Dolphins offensive lineman Jonathan Martin has accused the Dolphins locker room of fostering an environment of bullying lead by fellow lineman Richie Incognito who has since been suspended indefinitely from the team.
The media reacted with its normal full force of judgment. First, Jonathan Martin took the soft label because after all football is for men. Then, “racism” was thrown into the fire after a text revealing a racial slur was released and it all came down on Richie Incognito. The validity of the racism claims are a subject for another time.
All the while, everyone’s been screaming, “BULLYING IS VERY BAD.” Well, duh. I think we can all agree on that. We all seem to be talking about the symptom but no one has really been speaking on the disease. Then, Chicago Bears wideout Brandon Marshall cut through it all so perfectly last week.
“Look at it from this standpoint,” Marshall said. “Take a little boy and a little girl. A little boy falls down and the first thing we say as parents is ‘Get up, shake it off. You’ll be OK. Don’t cry.’ A little girl falls down, what do we say? ‘It’s going to be OK.’ We validate their feelings. So right there from that moment, we’re teaching our men to mask their feelings, to not show their emotions.”
That statement brings an NFL locker room to your living room and drops it squarely on your lap. Our culture has fostered the bullying that every parent is dying to destroy, and we have tough decisions to make if we want change.
I’m not preaching that I know how to raise your child. I don’t. I’m not saying if we all would just change this bullying would end. It’s not that simple. I just need us all to look in the mirror and take responsibility for our role in this culture of bullying.
We often want gray situations to be black and white. Parenting is full of situations like this.
When do you validate your child’s tears?
When do you teach your child to fight back?
When do you teach your child to alert the proper authority figure?
There are no exactly right answers to these questions. However, the old ideals of let the boys fight it out to solve problems isn’t exactly promoting world peace. Men will be men doesn’t exactly cut it.
The NFL has a cultural problem. It’s not a nice place in those locker rooms. Brandon Marshall spoke to that as well. It might never get better because in case you were unaware those guys are a bit insane to do what they do every day.
But, a sports problem more often than not has real world implications. We tell kids not to bully all the time. There are ad slogans in commercials and programs in schools, but are we teaching them values to prevent bullying?
You can teach toughness. Teaching your kid to keep fighting through a 91-0 blowout seems pretty tough to me. However, teaching your kid to react to every slight thrown his way with fisticuffs seems outdated.
You can teach him to not to be a snitch. Calling a 91-0 loss in a sporting event bullying seems like tattle telling to me? However, calling an authority figure when a fight breaks out seems like sound judgment which could save long term damage.
Values like respecting other people and talking out our differences can mix with defending yourself when provoked and not ratting out your friends at every corner.
It’s all gray area. There’s a fine line between creating a saint and a pushover. We could all do a better job of tailoring our message to fit situations instead of creating an ironclad philosophy. We could all do a better job of letting each other know it’s okay to release emotion (cry) and communicate our feelings.
This problem isn’t a football is barbaric problem. It’s an America problem. Each parent has to sort out this issue for themselves. There are no right answers. However, the wrong answer is to turn a blind eye and pretend nothing’s wrong at all. The bullies say otherwise.
