If only more parents were creative enough to react in ways like this, we may not have near the problems with bullying that we do today. Way to go mom!
When a Utah mom learned her daughter was being a bully in school she made sure she did something about it and kudos to her for what she did.
Ally (the mom) received an email from her daughter's teacher. It said her daughter (Kaylee) had been relentlessly teasing a fellow student for the past several weeks because of the way she dressed. The teasing was so bad in fact, the student no longer wanted to attend school.
"She would take her out on the playground and call her names, and tell her she was a slob and tell her she dressed like a sleaze," Ally says. "Someone not wanting to go to school anymore based off of something that one other little person said to them. I mean, that's huge, that's damaging..."
And it is, especially if it continues on. We have all seen what can happen.
Ally immediately sat down with her daughter to set things right however Kaylee showed no remorse, nor any desire to change her behaviour.
"I thought this is a perfect moment for us to really teach her, this is right, this is wrong, which path are you going to take? And then it's her choice."
Ally headed to the local thrift store where she spent $50 on a number of "not so flattering or popular" clothing items. When her daughter awoke and started to dress for school she was presented with her new attire along with a tattered pair of sneakers to wear. She wasn't happy as you can well imagine but nonetheless, Ally stuck to her guns and off to school a tearful Kaylee went. For the next two days she wore the hand me down clothes. For the next two days SHE became the school topic and the subject of teasing. Humiliating? Yes maybe, but Kaylee doesn't bully anymore. "It's stupid and it's mean," she now says, "and it hurts people."
"Experts" are now saying Ally went too far. I wholeheartedly disagree. And while Ally concedes it was tough to watch her daughter go through the experience, she believes it was an important life learning lesson that Kaylee won't soon forget. "If she chooses to be a bully after this, then at some point in her life, she's going to be on the other side and she'll know what it really feels like. And I think now that she knows what it feels like, and she doesn't want to be that person anymore because she knows how hurtful it is."
Good job Ally! Mission accomplished. Problem solved.
