A Running Mom

I noticed something when my daughter was being bullied by one of her best friends. It was simply this: a lot of the parents I know were kinda bullying each other.

Think I’m crazy? It’s not that these parents were knocking into each other or making obvious attempts to make others feel left out, alone or insulted (although I know a few parents who behave that way, too! Jeesh!) No, these parents were all about talking about other families, kids or individuals in a really unkind manner. The thing that struck me, was that my daughter brought it to my attention.

“Why doesn’t Mrs. So-N-So like Mrs. So-N-So,” she asked me.

“Why don’t you think she likes her,” I asked.

“Because, she’s always talking about her,” said my daughter.

That’s when it hit me. Mrs. So-N-So was a bully! She had a way of talking about any person who walked away from a conversation that made everyone feel just a tad uncomfortable. We, the group of friends who share a friendship with the bully, just listen and put up with it. To me, it highlights how that person probably talks about me when I walk away from a conversation. Fine. I couldn’t care less. Talk away.

But what I hadn’t realized, and the part that startled me, was that my daughter, at age 12, noticed it and it bugged her. So by chatting with this woman; by being “friends” with this woman; I wondered, was I teaching my daughter that bullying was ok?

How do we, as adults, deal with bullies? Was I acting like a bully, too, then?

So I started to think about it. We are all modeling behavior as parents. Whether we are trying to or not, whatever we’re doing on a daily basis, we’re showing our kids an example. It’s a stresser, isn’t it?

I used that situation to talk to my daughter about how people are all different, and that the skills she learned to deal with her friend who was bullying her, are skills that will enhance her ability to have great friendships throughout her life.

She understood this point immediately.

“You have some really great friends, Mom,” she said.

And so this is how I could tell that my daughter was growing up. Her experience with bullying, in a way, helped her distinguish between those great friends that we all have and the other friends we socialize with. She could see the difference between my true friends vs. the variety of people that come in and out of our life, who we enjoy on an entirely different level.

But it made me think, too. Am I helping to encourage that bullying behavior by not addressing it as an adult? In a way, am I empowering bullying?

So, think about it. Do you do the same thing? Without meaning it, are you a bully?

That’s enough to send me on a 6-mile run! Off I go!

May your next run be a good one.

Rebecca

Just ran a fabulous, hilly 4 and I feel wonderful. This song is stuck in my mind. I love it. And it bears a significance to me right now, as I reflect on the past few months in the life of our daughter, a 6th grader.  She’s found “the greatest love of all” this year. Maybe you’ll understand better when you read the story.

Over the past few months, my husband and I have learned about our daughter’s struggle to confront a bully in her school. Good news is that she did it. Now she’s establish herself with a group of happy and helpful friends who believe in the goals she’s setting for herself for the end of the school year. Her strength to move away from the bully didn’t come from watching role models of mean girls on tv or today’s mean girl movies. She didn’t read about what to do in the “chic lit” stories that the bully loves to read. And candidly, she didn’t follow any specific advice from me or my husband. We had no idea that she was even being bullied. But something we’ve been saying did help to spark her inner voice. This, coupled with a few anti-bullying initiatives at her school, seemed to help her identify the bullying problem.

See, we always discuss with our kids how important it is to choose good friends. We’ll ask them, “Which friends are helping you become the best ‘you’ that you can be?”  Well, this year, as our daughter started to meet some new girls in middle school, she found herself thinking about her friends. She started to evaluate which ones were helping her become the best kid she could be. I find this amazing. But this is what she tells us. Then, her school started to educate the kids on what it means to be bullied.  So she found herself struggling with her friendship with a girl who, unbeknownst to us, constantly degraded her, insulted her, and started even physically pushing her. Sometimes she was nice. Most of the time she created havoc. Our daughter came to realize that this girl who she had known for years, wasn’t a friend at all. Our daughter realized, on her own, that she was actually being bullied. She told me that she thought to herself, “I don’t have to put up with it anymore.” And she spoke with her school counselor and made arrangements to be moved away from the bully. My husband and I did notice a dramatic change in our daugher: She became happier. More fun. Nicer to her siblings. Started doing better in school. Wearing more creative clothing. And now she’s even taking better care of herself. Unbelievable.

Now that we know the whole story, we’ve gotten involved with the school, with our daughter’s ongoing interactions with the girl, and to an extent, even the family. It turns out, this girl had been bullying more girls than just our daughter. The parents seem incredibly surprised at their daughter’s behavior. And since we all agreed that it does no good to allow anyone to continue behaving this way, the family responded quite pro-actively. Hopefully this experience will end up having a positive impact on many more than just our daughter.

So you see, it’s been an amazing few months.

May your next run be a good one.

Rebecca

Photo Credit: www.wickedrunningclub.com

I don’t know these people, but don’t they look like fun? They look like a bunch of friends who have run a few races together. They’re probably the kind of group of friends that gets together to run a couple of races a year. They email back ‘n forth their training schedules. They offer each other motivation to keep running. And they most likely have a blast when they run those races.

The NYRRC has a fabulous crowd of runners who get each other out all winter, spring summer, and fall, with a variety of races in all kinds of distances. You get a bunch of people to sign up and run a race together, meet up at a local, fun restaurant or pub afterwards, hang out and enjoy some good food, drinks and a bunch of giggles, and the whole thing becomes a fabulously fun time. I just love it. And I miss it, now that I’m not in NYC any more!

In my town, there are a couple of groups who get the races going and I’m now discovering a whole new world of friends who lace up their shoes on the weekends for a good run. Maybe I can get them to meet me and my fave person out for a celebratory snack, toast or beer. These people in this picture have inspired me to get out and make my next long run a really festive one. I can’t wait to deserve the celebration that will follow. Shall I try and run 9? Too soon to tell.

I’m up for some wicked good running, aren’t you? 

May your next run be a good one.

Rebecca

I’m struck by clarity when I run. I mean really struck. Like bolt of lightening struck. It’s an amazing feeling to have an issue clobbering me for days and then shazzam, I go for a run and I get it. I don’t know if that means I have a bit of glue stuck in my head, my heart or my neurological pathways, that keeps me from processing issues to their completion, or if for me, running just makes me focus on whatever is most on my mind so I deal with it!

I listened to a friend tell me the story of finding some questionable items in her husband’s pile of debris from his pockets that made her worry that he might be cheating. I remember as she told me, we were at the 4-mile marker of a 6-mile run. We had reached the top of a hill. I looked at her. I knew. She was right. I didn’t know her or her husband that well, but her suspicion had to be right on. I just knew it.

I spoke to another friend during a very quick run about her need to leave her husband. She couldn’t bring herself to do it yet. But she felt strongly that she needed to act. I felt in my toes that she was absolutely correct.

And then another friend confided in me that she knew she loved this fellow and that they were to marry. Not right away. But she knew he was the one. I was the only one she told. And yes, she shared this with me while we ran a quick, 2-mile run on a warm, spring day.

Maybe we all get a little clarity on a good run. Go out and get yours today. I’m off to find mine.

May your next run be a good one.

Rebecca