Lasting effects of Bullying

For those that do not know, when Paige was in the 2nd grade she had to deal with a bully in her class.  Notes were left in her desk several weeks in a row by the same child.  When Paige told me about it I contacted her teacher who was already working on trying to figure out who was doing it and had talked to her class about how bullying was not okay and would not be tolerated in their classroom.  They did figure out who was writing the notes and putting them into her desk as well as stealing items from her desk and she was punished.  The sad thing is that Paige was good friends with her for several years and had been in class with her since they were 4 yrs old.

Come to present day...

  Paige was given an assignment to write a story about Bullying.  Seeing that she had went through this, knew how it felt, and could write this paper knowing first hand what went on, I thought it would be an easy thing to do.  But instead it was not.  Last night, two days before the due date of the paper, she was struggling.  She wrote what she thought would be a good enough paper to just get by ( 2 short paragraphs with little details). When I questioned why it was not complete and told her I knew she could do better than what she gave me, she started breaking down.  She said she did not want to write the paper,  she could not think of anything more to say, and it was the best she could do.  I told her it was important for her to do her work to 100% of her ability and that she was not doing that with this paper.  I questioned her more, asking her if it was the topic that was hard for her.  She said yes with tears rolling down her cheek.  I tried to help her add more details to the paper... what did the girl look like, how did she feel being bullied, and more but she had shut down.  I asked her to describe herself and she said she couldn't.  I listed several of her greatest qualities and she just shook her head and did not look at me.  I knew this was not going to work.  I asked her if she wanted to change the story line of her paper some she was trying to write what had happened to her in class while changing the names of the girls.  She agreed and chose to change the story line to something else.  This seemed to help her.  We discussed an outline of  the girls and the setting as well as what the bully did.  Disconnecting her personal experiences seemed to help.  She was able to complete the paper about bullying with just a few corrections to be made for the final paper.

As a parent I did not know that she was still stewing over this.  I had not seen it in her until now.  I had noticed that she had become a more introvert but I thought that was because that was how I am.  But I have a feeling that I did not look deep enough.  I figured after everything had been dealt with at the school and the child was punished for what she had done, it was over with.  She went through last year still in school and the same class with this girl and I did not hear anything.  But deep down she was still hurting.  Sometimes it is good that the kids have these hard topics to work on.  If it were not for this paper, I would not have known. She tells me a lot but I think she holds a lot back as well.  Now I know and now we can continue to work through this.  Luckily here in England she seems really settled.  She has made a lot of great friends and we have left the bully behind and will not have to worry about her again.  I am not saying that bullying will not happen again, but I will be looking for and taking to both children about it more often.