At just a little under five feet tall, I admit that I am vertically challenged.  As a child, I was never the first, second, third, fourth, or even the fifth one picked for games such as basketball that require long, lanky legs and lengthy, elongated arms.  In fact, I always watched as the crowds of kids slowly dwindled away onto opposing teams, until I was the last one left to face the grumblings from the team that finally acquired me.  However, my littleness always allowed me to play a lethal game of limbo, and I was always fast and furious at flag football which allowed me to get back at the cranky kids who griped about me being on their team.  Yet when I married and finally became a parent, I longed for kids with long-limbed legs and lengthy arms who wouldn’t have to endure the mockeries that I received as a child.

Unfortunately, with a five feet four inch tall husband, height just wasn’t in our gene pool.  No matter how carefully I planned and measured each meal or how many bad tasting, vitamin-fortified concoctions I drank during each pregnancy, we still ended up with lethal limbo players instead of tall, lanky basketball players.  Of course, my babies were always the cutest in the nurseries with their petite little bodies and tiny, whimpering cries, and, I must confess, I was a little relieved that they weren’t too big for me to hold, cuddle, and carry around without assistance.  However, I knew that someday someone would make them the butt of laughters because of their size.

That day came when Autumn was in third grade.  She had many friends and was well-liked.  She had grown up with many of the children, and not once had any of them ever chastised her about her height or looks.  However, it is amazing how one child can change the make-up of a group of seemingly normal friends.  “Short stuff!” she would call Autumn as she tried to convince the rest of the group not to play with my daughter.  I listened almost daily as my daughter poured her heart out each time I came home from work.  At first I tried to just comfort her and give her advice as somehow some probably never-bullied before researcher claimed that the more adults became involved, the worse the bully made it for the victimized child.  Back then, being a young mom (and having parents who were first time immigrants that didn’t know how to deal with these types of situations), I swallowed every bull-crap researched advice available instead of listening to my gut feelings.

Finally, I received the call from the principal one day.  Autumn had bitten her bully and was sitting in the principal’s office.  Katie, the principal, who was also a colleague of mine, was trying to decide whether she should suspend Autumn.  I rushed through traffic from the school that I principaled at to Autumn’s school.  The ride seemed like hours even though her school was only ten minutes away.  As I walked into the principal’s office, Autumn looked up at me with her big, brown, frightened eyes which were also puffy and red from crying.  Deep down, I was livid that my poor little girl, the true victim in all of this, was in the principal’s office facing suspension while the little bitch who had picked on her from the start of the school year was out there, walking away free with no noose around her neck.  The calm, reasonable educator in me disappeared as the superhero mom in me raged and began to gain the strength needed to protect my child.  I tried to keep my cool though as I finally confessed everything to Katie, telling her how Autumn had tried every trick in the book to work things out with Nelly, her bully.  When that didn’t work, she tried to avoid Nelly.  She even tried to make new friends just to be away from Nelly’s group of taunting little girls.  By this time, I was so furious that I thought I would have a nervous break-down.  Luckily, Katie was also a mom herself, and understood exactly what I meant.  She encouraged Autumn and I to speak with the school guidance counselor who later worked with Autumn, Nelly, and a group of other girls to help prevent the bullying from continuing.

By the end of the school year, Autumn and Nelly had not become best friends; however, they had learned to respect one another, and the bullying had stopped.  When my son, Kalel, went to fourth grade and encountered his bullies, I no longer sat quietly in the shadows, whispering words of encouragement and giving him strategies to avoid his bullies.  Instead, I went straight to the principal and guidance counselor and demanded that something be done.  Within two weeks, the bullying had stopped.  We cannot sit still and wait for our children to find their own ways of dealing with bullies — ways that may most likely end in someone getting hurt.  Schools claiming that children need to find their own solutions to bullying are in for disasters like Columbine and the Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover case in May of 2009 where the 11 year old victim hung himself.  Instead, we must work collaboratively with other adults and together, as a community, we must help our children build bonds of respect for one another.  We must give a clear message that bullying is unacceptable no matter what age and what type.