Bullies

It is Tuesday night and I get home from work a little after 7pm, 12 hours after I left home. I am tired and hungry. The kids have had dinner with Aidan and Lydia watching their respective TVs. Elisa comes up to me and wants to help make my dinner. We go to the kitchen where she helps scoop my premade chicken curry and beef chili. I nuke it for two and half minutes and ask Aidan if he’s done his homework yet. Aidan starts his homework and is immediately frustrated. To the point that he’s almost shaking and using harsh language. I work with him on some long division problems and try to remember myself how to do it. This frustrates him even more. The next night he is even more frustrated. Same with the next day.

He was a bit like this when he first started going to elementary school two and a half years ago but has since adjusted and for the most part has been fine except for when he’s been assigned an obscene amount of homework. When this happens Yang typically checks if he knows how to do the problems and if so she just gives him the answers. For me, this would require that I know how to do the problems.

My reaction to Aidan’s frustration is to be frustrated myself. Beyond that I set boundaries for him when his frustration spills into other people and let him know I’m there to help when he is calmer. On Friday morning as he was getting ready for school when I asked him if he was still frustrated and he said yes that he wasn’t happy. The mornings have been “ok” up to this point. I had asked him earlier in the week if anyone at school was picking on him and he said no. I asked him again and this time he admitted to it. Yang called him later in the day and confirmed that a boy had been bullying him for being small and not smart.

I’ve tried to watch out for Aidan being bullied ever since he went to pre-school. In pre-school his classmates were almost exclusively Chinese and he did get picked on one year. At his elementary school the students are all foreign passport holders which means a mix of Chinese heritage kids and foreign kids and as a consequence Aidan didn’t get picked on for being of mixed race.

Someone once told me that you send your kids to school so some other kid will kick their ass. So you don’t have to. The rules of the playground are the rules of life and fitting in means knowing your station. That kind of thing. But it’s hard as a parent to know your kid is being picked on and even harder to see how upset it makes him.

There is little solace in knowing that the bully undoubtedly has more emotional problems than the bullied. If Yang was home she would be teaching Aidan to fight back, that a quick punch to the jaw and a kick to the groin is how to deal with a bully.

For my part I am writing this and spending time with Aidan passing the basketball around and just hanging out. Today he’s been relaxed, playing and mentoring Elisa. Stopping by to chat about the Chinese basketball association and how it compares to the US. Nice to have my boy back at least until school starts on Monday.