Posted on 02/18/2011 8:15:42 AM PST by SantaLuz
Monika Shreves, a college senior with a petite frame and long, black hair, remembers the first mean girl she met. The girl lived in Shreves's Northern Virginia neighborhood and had the blondest hair and eyelashes Shreves had ever seen.
The two arrived together at Girl Scout camp, and the girl assumed command of the cabin they were to sleep in.
"This is the cool cabin," she told the other girls who wandered into the campsite, looking for a place to throw down their stuff. She'd size up each girl. "You can come in," she'd tell one. "You cannot," she'd tell another.
Shreves and her friends started referring to the girl privately as "the devil child." That same year, Shreves's mom, Christine, was driving Shreves, the blond girl and another girl home from school. All three were in the back seat of the car.
As the car swung into their neighborhood, the blond girl turned to the other girl and asked, "Who would you rather go home with? Me or Monika?"
"You," the other girl said.
Shreves burst into tears.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Phew, yeah, it was starting to smell bad. :-)
Well, I guess I know a lot of outliers, then.
But of course, you have a bias: The institutionalized child answered my questions with grunts, monosyllables, or merely nods of the head. Then there was the 20 degree off-centered stare. Yes, there were a few exceptions.
Your choice of words is quite telling -- your "institutionalized child" attitude is precisely the attitude I noted among the so-called "outliers." Smug and dismissive of those who do not do as you do.
Perhaps you're an "outlier," too.
The gist of this article seems to be that bullies can, and do, grow up to be nice adults. I’ll agree with can, but it’s certainly not a given that they actually do so. IMO, it’s more likely they grow up to raise the next generation of bullies.
Interesting. I have seen homeschooled kids throw fits, pout, and act out .... just like ANY kid will do.
It amuses me, how homeschooling parents continually tout the superiority of their children over those whose parents choose differently. It's like you're defensive, and trying to compensate for something.
Just to throw it back at you .... some of the most neurotic kids I've ever seen, have been home-schooled. Not their faults; rather, their parents were so fearful of the outside world, and passed that fear onto their kids, that the youngsters never had a chance. And the "home-schooling choice" was an important element of that fear.
The kids from school made cards, gave her special "Build-a-Bears", sent emails, called, etc. The girls that bullied her were a group of home-schooled girls at church. Several told her to her face they couldn't be her friend because her cancer was a sign of sin and she needed to repent. At Sunday School, they refused to sit next or across from her. They sent her emails that they were forming prayer pools for her to repent and no longer be such a horrible sinner. 3 of them even put on a mock play where the main character worm a white bandage on her face and engaged in really ugly acts. All this happened on Sundays and during Saturday activities. She didn't want to tell me because she knew how upset I would be. I was.
After speaking to the pastor who spoke to the girls and their parents, two girls refused to apologize and started sending her emails pretty much all the time. Their parents defended their actions and blamed it on my daughter. The excuse? "Our girls are home-schooled and don't have the evil influences of public school. They aren't capable of this." Not until I printed out the emails did they sort of, kind of believe, even then, they were sceptical. The entire incident became known to the church at large and just went from bad to ugly. Three families ended up leaving because of it.
So, yes, home-schooled children, even churched ones, are capable of meanness and cruelty, and publically schooled children are capable of kindness. It all goes back to the parents.
r9etb,
Please don’t break it to wintertime that kids other than homeschoolers can be fine and decent people. She’s a fanatic, and spouting her arrogant and biased generalizations about homeschoolers vs. public schoolers seems to make her happy.
Oh, and she’s been using that “institutionalized child” smear for years on FR, and still thinks it’s clever.
SoftballMominVA,
That’s a heartbreaking story; I feel bad for your daughter. Obviously those girls weren’t acting Christ-like at all!
Your story illustrates what most of us can agree on - a child’s behavior is primarily dependent on the kid’s parents & homelife.
>>Just to throw it back at you .... some of the most neurotic kids I’ve ever seen, have been home-schooled<<
Well, I guess that indicates how many Homeschooled kids you know. I work with PS kids. I never said all of them are bad, in fact, I said that there is an exception to every rule. Both ways.
Seems PS parents get really defensive and bring up the ones “they know” to say how “off” homeschooling kids are. That’s really not the homeschooling parent’s problem. Personally, I don’t care at all how well adjusted anyone’s kids are but my own.
Which is why I have taken the freedom to choose the associations my kids have. Some are public school kids, some are homeschooled.
It was a hard-learned lesson in many ways. Even kids of very good families can get with someone else and as a group, create a very destructive situation. One of the girls deeply, and honestly apologized to my daughter a couple of years ago via email. She said that at the time, she was worried about an aunt who had breast cancer and in retrospect, she was mean to her because she couldn’t be mean to her aunt. It sounds like a pretty twisted logic, but then, we are talking about 12/13 year old girls and in a way, it makes sense.
I think the term “institutionalized”child is a bit softer and less harsh than “incarcerated” child. :-)
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