"My Little Pony" backpack = "trigger" for bullying

Repeated teasing is bullying.

 

I'm going to assume that she bought him this backpack. She had the opportunity to nip this thing in the bud at the back to school sale. She didn't. I'm all for individuals expressing themselves, but sometimes as a parent, you have to step in and be the bad guy in order to save them a ton of grief.

 

What hasn't been said, but I think is understood is that the kids bullying this kid should obviously be disciplined. I don't care what kind of backpack or lunch bag a kid has, nobody "deserves" to be bullied.

There is a girl in my youngest son's kindergarten class who dresses like and 100 percent looks like a boy. She has two older brothers and her dad is a football coach and she mostly wears football jerseys to class. The mom told my wife that she wants to look like and dress like her brothers and there's nothing she can say to convince her otherwise...

The mom convinced/tricked the daughter to grow her hair out to donate to charity, so that has helped a little. The daughter has a confidence to her that you don't see in many young kids. The mom told her, "If you dress like that, people might be mean to you about it." and she was OK with it. Everybody who meets this girl is in awe of her, so I doubt she deals with much trouble.

 

So, you are just determined to speak out of the wrong end of your anatomy on this one. Got it.

 

But a post that does nothing but attack another member of the board really raises the level of discourse. Thank you so much for your shining example.

 

Yeah, I'm with LTL on this one...

Obviously, nobody here knows what version is the closest to being accurate, but everything about this mom screams "attention whore"

Even taking everything the mom says at face value, I still think calling the TV station and putting her kid in front of cameras is a horrible, horrible move.

 

A freshman at my son's school used a cheap, pink Hilary Duff (Lizzy McGuire) backpack all last year. I assume it's because it's the only one he had or got it for free. I don't know if he has a mother or if she is in his life. But he was one of the best-liked kids on my son's team.

 

See, the last bit I can agree with, but the rest? A parent is putting their own desire for attention ahead of the well being of a child is pretty damn awful behavior. Sorry, but there isn't much there to support that opinion.

 

She called a TV station to tell them the whole story. What we don't know is how many steps were taken before she called the station. I get the sense it wasn't many... As a parent, getting the media involved, and giving my kid the tag as "The My Little Pony kid" for the forseeable future would be the last thing I would do.

I don't think the school handled this well either. I certainly hope the kids who were bullying the "Brony" were disciplined before they asked the mom to have her kid find a new lunch bag.

It was funny, last night I was at my kid's karate practice and all of the parents there were debating this story. It was quite interesting to say the least. There's definitely a lot of different valid directions to go on this one, but the one issue where there appeared to be consensus was that the mom should not have called the TV station.

 

The original link no longer works.
http://wtvr.com/2014/03/17/my-little-pony-backpack-ban/

The school is in Buncombe County, NC (Asheville), which I would imagine is pretty forward thinking in regards to those making decisions as educators.

I teach at a high school, and I am amused by the number of kids that wear cartoon backpacks. I don't think there are any guys wearing My Little Pony backpacks, but there are some I wouldn't think a high school aged kid would think to wear. Must be some kind of fad. One of my students that wears a cartoon backpack has gauged his earlobes up to an inch.

 

I sort of feel like high school kids are old enough to understand the reaction their backpack or lunchbag decisions will cause. When I was in high school, Scooby Doo lunch boxes were all the rage.

 

This is all interesting to me. I have a 6-year-old son that likes to wear nail polish, would probably choose princesses over super heroes, doesn't particularly care about team sports at this point and has been known to wear a tutu around the neighborhood. He also is probably the most aggressive of my three boys in a physical boys will be boys sense. I don't think he cares about perceptions on either end and gets along with most of his classmates.

And while none of the above bothers me, I did put the stop to a princess bike helmet he wanted last year just because I felt it would put him in a bad situation, even with his closest friends. To an extent I felt guilty about doing that. It will be interesting to see how he continues to grow. If he wants a princess back pack in third or fourth grade, I don't know how much I'd care, but we did make the previous move.

If we were to believe this story word for word, the school did not handle it properly. But we know we can't do take it that way. Hell, he might have been hitting kids with said back pack (and with my description above, wouldn't surprise me if my son did something like that).

Schools do a ridiculous amount to combat bullying these days. My kids' school does weekly sessions with the counselor talking about such things. Yet I see clear bullies at the school. In a perfect world we'd love for everyone to be accepted and for bullying to be wiped out, but it's probably not going to happen in our lifetimes. So I guess every side needs to figure out a way to mitigate it the best they can.