Where Rose Writes Very True Stories

So, Dexter was very insistent on doing homeschool, which I was totally happy with. Yay for safety! But then we started having trouble with the online program. And not just a little trouble. I really worried about Dexter falling behind.

So one day, Paul and I sat Dexter down and I told him, “Dude, this online schooling thing just isn’t working.” I explained my concerns and assured him that his school is doing a very good job at keeping everyone safe.

That’s when Dexter told me that it wasn’t his fear of the Covid that was keeping him out of school. It was the fact that he was being bullied.

I had known he’d had some trouble with another kid, but I hadn’t connected just how bad it was. It had been the cause of his grades dropping. And the kid that was bullying him had made him “not want to exist.”

I was livid. I was ready to go on a rampage. His teacher reached out to me, and Paul and I met with him, his other teacher and the principal. They were absolutely AMAZING. His principal assured me that she would contact this boy’s mother and talk with them both, and they all promised to make sure this behavior didn’t continue.

Then his principal informed me that this bully had undergone a procedure that had left him in headgear. He was afraid of being bullied himself. l couldn’t help but see some poetic justice in that, being the angry mom that I was.

With these reassurances, and knowing he had a friend waiting for him at school, Dexter bravely went back today. When he got home, I asked if he had a good day. He said he did. Was everyone nice? Yes, they were. “Did you laugh at his headgear?” I asked jokingly (and very bitterly). Dexter said, “No. I told him it was cool.”

I had to ask him to repeat that a couple of times. “Yeah. I told him it was cool,” he said.

My 10-year-old son just taught me what charity really means. He taught me what it really means to forgive. To let go. To have compassion. He just showed me what Christ meant when He said, “But I say unto you, love your enemies… for if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye?”

I needed this lesson. If everyone applied this, the world would finally heal.