Over the weekend I was confronted with an unsavoury and upsetting incident where my thirteen year old son was victim to an episode of online bullying by some boys he used to go to school with.
They were making fun and being mean to him during an Instagram live video and I only found out because my wife happened to be browsing Instagram at the exact same time and saw the video stream, she follows one of the boys bullies on Instagram.
She was on holiday in Portugal at time and gave me the news about the incident while I was at home with my son here in the UK.
My son was very mature about the incident and thankfully didn’t seem too upset, I think I was much more angry and hurt than he was, especially as one of the boys bullies is the son of a close friend.
My immediate reaction was to want go and violently shake the idiots who thought this behaviour was acceptable, but we agreed to sleep on things and discuss what we would do in the morning.
With a clear head the next day we agreed the best approach was to contact the parents to let them know what their little angels had done.
All (but one) of the parents gave their child a huge kick up the backside and this was followed by an apology directly to my son, sadly one of them decided the best approach was to accept her son’s version of events that he wasn’t involved and that it was the others.
Fortunately, my son no longer goes to the same school as these kids and he has blocked them from all forms of contact online, my hope is that the incident only serves to help him learn to be a better person and makes him stronger.
When I was drinking, I can say with absolute confidence that this would have been a trigger to hit the wine hard. I know I would have used it to blot it all out and also would have also spent the evening ranting in an irrational manner about the whole thing, I may even have done or said something stupid because I was full of wine and not in complete in control at a time when I really needed to be.
As I look back on this incident I am so pleased that I was able to comfort my son and deal with him on the night it happened in a sober state, I was able to be rational and speak to him with compassion and logic. It meant we ended up with the best possible outcome and have subsequently moved on with him being totally clear that the other kids are the ones who have a problem, not him.
Bullying and hate is unacceptable on any level and I urge anyone who is a victim to speak out and talk to someone, don’t suffer in silence.
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