Bullying — My Daughter?

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I arrived from inner city England in 2004, having worked in the public system there, and have just been allowed a leave of absence from a Catholic school in Victoria where I taught since arriving in Canada.

It was not long after I arrived that I heard of the horrific tale of Rena Virk, of how she had been victimized and bullied long before she was murdered under the Craigflower bridge in Victoria. Girls, bullying? You better believe it.

When I was a lad, on the 31 bus that meandered through the council estates of Tyseley and Hall Green, I thought it was only fat kids who played the French Horn and had their hair cut by their mothers who got bullied. Kids like me! I can still remember (vividly) how a lad from another school (ironically, the local Catholic school) would systematically bully me. Often he would threaten, and occasionally punch. I never knew his name and have no idea why I was a target. Perhaps he felt the Mozart concertos were completely over rated and over played. I will never know, and my only hope is that he is somewhere, buying expensive therapy to help him come to terms with the fact he made another human being’s life miserable. I suffered and survived as most kids did back then, choosing friends wisely, making sure I could crack a joke and get myself out of a thumping at break time. Playing football helped a lot, and eventually I swapped the horn for a guitar and let my hair grow.

So, back to 2004, and a new start in Canada with my wife Louise and three children. We settled them into school, and watched as they started to wear baseball caps and ask for Timbits after school. All seemed to be going well, but of course that is what’s supposed to happen. We didn’t know that our daughter was living a different reality, and she wasn’t telling. You don’t tell anybody that there is someone who actively hates you, or about someone who frightens you—you enter the world of the bullied.

Our daughter is the proverbial life and soul; like my sister and mother, she is a beautiful, complicated and most of all, normal girl. However, our daughter started to become very angry at home, particularly with us. We watched grades going down. We began to think she was unwell. Doctor’s appointments were made. It was my wife who was able to see all these symptoms for what they were—our daughter’s reaction to being bullied. She had fallen foul of the class Queen Bee, and boy, oh boy was she going to pay. Everyone reading this who has daughters will know how it feels when people are out to hurt your child. But these are not the bogeymen, but rather, butter-wouldn’t-melt tweenies, young girls who might struggle to spell malicious, systematic, coordinated, covert, but can sure as hell put them into operation, often right under the nose of the teacher.

How could anybody possibly even think about bullying my child? I was a teacher; I knew all the tricks. Did they know how loud I could shout, or how I could write angry notes to parents? Sadly, as I was about to learn, my armory was completely useless against the world of girl bullying. Like a mutant in the popular X Men movies, these girls had powers that I could only look back and shake my head at.

We tried unsuccessfully to talk to the parent of the Queen Bee—not good. We tried the classroom teacher. Definitely not good. We were not only failing to solve the problem, we were making our daughter more upset and on edge. We were running out of options.
Before, during and after my teaching career, I have played and written music. It became my own personal way of dealing with issues. I wrote a song, initially for my daughter to sing at some point in her life, but as I was then in the middle of recording a new album, the producer, when he heard it, said, “You should sing this with her.”

I did, and it became a way of her seeing that I knew what she was going through, and her willingness to sing with me meant that she approved. We moved her shortly afterwards to another school (I read Barbara Coloroso’s The Bully, the Bullied, and The Bystander, and she said it was a legitimate option). My daughter enjoyed a fantastic year in grade 7.

I wrote in the song that there is hurt on every side. Hard to think about when your child is hurting so much, but nonetheless it’s true.
I am hoping to go back into schools and pilot a songwriting program for children to help them deal with all the problems associated with bullying—writing the song helped me and may be a useful coping tool for young people too.

After the incident, I became aware that I simply didn’t care if a child passed an exam; it became more important to me to see our children being happy, safe and protected—both the potential victims of bullying and the victims who become bullies.
I also keep a special eye out for French Horn players.

Talk in whispers, but it’s meant for me
I can hear them, it’s not hard to see

Sticks and stones just rhymes with bones [words are never seen]
But I can handle sticks and stones [dirty looks are clean]

It’s a jungle, dog eat dog out there
Wear your make up, you can’t not afford to care

Sticks and stones just rhymes with bones [words are never seen]
But I can handle sticks and stones [dirty looks are clean]

I admit it, I am beaten, I can’t win this war
Please stop it, do you know what you are fighting for?
I may be this, I may be that, I may be something you can’t see
I may be all of the above
All I wanna be is me

If you are the same or if you’re not
As long as they’re not you, it will never stop
Sticks and stones just rhymes with bones [words are never seen]
But I can handle sticks and stones [dirty looks are clean]

I admit it, I am beaten, I can’t win this war
Please stop it do you know what you are fighting for?
I may be this, I may be that, I may be something you can’t see
I may be all of the above
All I wanna be is me

Where’s the rule book? Let me read it now
Tear the pages. Let the words fall to the ground

I don’t believe this anymore [there’s hurt on every side]
So let the healing waters flow [there’s hurt in every side]

I admit it, I am beaten, I can’t win this war
Please stop it do you know what you are fighting for?
I may be this, I may be that, I may be something you can’t see

I may be all of the above
All I wanna be is me

Visit www.paulobrien.ca to listen to Paul and his daughter singing All of the Above and to download the music track.