Some of the discussion on yesterday's post on bullying has gotten me thinking; not just the things people said in the comments but the sorts of things people often say on the subject of bullying and in general, to my call for zero tolerance to it.

I recognise that with a policy of zero tolerance the black and white components - what is and is not bullying - are easy to identify and apply the policy to but the grey is where it gets messy. Is name calling bullying? How much name calling? At what point does it move from within the realm of the sort of negative social discourse one has to get over to bullying? People claim that the grey renders a policy of zero tolerance hopeless to interpret and enforce.

I submit that this problem is not a reason to reject a policy of zero tolerance; far from it. This objection would pretty much apply to any type of behaviour we might want to form a hard line policy around. What is and is not harassment? What is and is not stalking? What is and is not assault? What is and is not drunk driving? What is the point the line is crossed in each variation and form that these types of offence come in? Like bullying, these issues have complex grey areas yet this problem does not prevent us forming policies to answer these questions.

A general framework, of what bullying is and what sort of zero tolerance response should apply accordingly, can be laid down as a lens and common sense and consistency in how the behaviour to hand is viewed in accord with the lens can provide a workable policy for a school's management to administer. Central records could be kept, defences to bullying formed and precedents could be created and followed. You could even go so far as to set up a bullying tribunal or court run by the ministry to ensure consistency and fairness and prevent arbitrariness. There are all sorts of ways around the problem. Zero tolerance to bullying could be implemented and nothing would send a clearer message and act as a better deterrent than knowing if you crossed that line you would face serious consequences.

Bullying in the real world is assault, is harassment/stalking, is theft. In the real world these things have real consequences. Why do adults get proper protection from them but not our children? This inequality in the most basic of civil rights the state owes all is not ok. [trying hard to not sound like Sue Bradford]

I am not talking jail or periodic detention or hefty fines for these kids or even criminal records, simply remove them from the situation. Make them be the ones that have to deal with making new friends and adjusting to new schools instead of the victims. Make them have to face up to what they are doing by the social ostracisation that comes with being stood down, suspended or expelled. Then maybe they will reflect on why they do what they do, why they think it is ok to treat people like that.

That latter point is another thing that bugs me about the standard approach to the bullying problem. If I was subjected to the kinds of things my son has gone through this year at my place of work my employers would not stand for it and would not call me in to meetings to talk about strategies or commission reports as to why my co-workers were acting that way.

If someone got a group of their friends together and pulled my pants down at work and someone else filmed it on their cellphone camera, those responsible would be immediately suspended pending investigation and on investigation would be fired; even in this politically correct employment environment where it is virtually impossible to fire anyone.

We expect children to put up with things that adults would never tolerate in their equivalent social setting; things that society deems abhorrent; things that are often far more hurtful to them at their age than they are to a grownup. I really don't care if the cool people at work don't like my haircut or my handbag; I don't go to work to make friends. Provided they don't get in my face, I can happily work in an environment where I am not that popular or even that liked. For a teenager, however, that sort of thing is much harder to handle because they are going through the very process of separating their identity from their family's and working out who they are. They are in the process of learning self-acceptance whereas I, in my mid 30's, worked that out years ago.

Worse, we send children back into environments where they are treated like this, where they have to face their abuser before they are ready to. Matt was assaulted a few months back by a nut-bar parent of one of our other kids friends (the guy turned out to be being investigated by CYFS). The assault was really minor but it took Matt some months to stop freaking out that he might run into the guy if we happened to be in situations where he might be - a pretty normal response from someone who does not regularly engage in violence. Kids who get assaulted at school are regularly sent back to classes where the people who have hurt and humiliated them are sitting in the next row, usually the next day. Any time off to allow the victim to get over the bullying and prepare for seeing the bully again is truancy or even if the school graciously permits this time off, it is the victim getting behind in the school work. The injustice is outrageous.

The final objection offered to the zero tolerance approach is that even bullies need an education and if you kick them out of school you are denying them this basic right. While this is true, I don't get the problem. Everyone is entitled to liberty yet if an adult commits assault, theft or serially and criminally harasses someone they voluntarily risk their liberty. That's their problem. They knew the consequences, they chose to engage in the action. Ditto with the bully. If you have to choose who gets an education then the guilty part loses over the innocent.

There are other schools and if they mess that up by bullying some more there is correspondence, boarding schools for bad kids, home education. It is not like removing them from one school is going to ensure they don't ever get an education but it sure is hell going to bring it home to them that if they want one they better not wreck another kid's.

Bullying is something so pervasive in our society that almost everyone has some experience with it. As such, I was not surprised to read a Family First release claiming that New Zealand kids almost top the world in the most bullied stats, suffering bullying at a rate of almost 50 per cent above the international average. The release refers to a Herald article on the report at the source of the stats and touches on some of the strategies schools are adopting to overcome bullying and the criticisms the new government minister, Anne Tolley, has made of them;

The previous Government has made half-hearted attempts at addressing the issue, with a series of checklist cards released last year. But it's action we need. And holding up a card while you're being bullied - well, that's not going to work.

All year we have battled bullying as our 13 year old son, Christian, has completed his first year in high school. Christian has Aspergers Syndrome and has a very high IQ when it comes to analytical and spatial reasoning, genius level - he is amazing, but struggles with what he calls "the irrational and inconsistent way adults relate to each other." The textbooks say he has a 'social disability so struggles with social issues' but having raised Christian I am not sure that "disability" is the right term, I would say he is just more perceptive than most of us.

When he was 4 he asked me why adults lie to each other so often. I asked him what he meant and he said that they say they like someone's dress or their cooking but they don't really. He explained, that when someone gives him a present for Christmas and they ask him if he likes it he gets in trouble if he tells them he doesn't, that it is a dumb present.

Further, when you go to someone's house for dinner you always ask what you can bring even though you know that they will answer they don't want you to bring anything. When you get to dinner you offer to clear away the dishes and to wash them but you know when you offer that they will tell you not to. Your offers are token gestures that you don't really mean and worse than that, every adult you say them to also knows you don't really mean them because they know that you know that the correct answer is to refuse the offers of help but if you don't offer you are not a good guest. Why is it good manners to lie and pretend to be sincere? Isn't telling the truth more important than hurting someone's feelings or not being a good guest?

Christian gets bullied because he is different and at times annoying to the other teenage boys he goes to school with; he finds teenagers as frustrating to understand as most adults do and often says things deliberately designed to expose the stupidity of their reasoning and he still has not mastered a good way to express frustration publicly, so he can make irritating noises at times when he is not sure how to respond appropriately.

His take on the anti-bullying strategies the ministry has in place is perceptive. During children's programming after school there are TV commercials about bullying put out by whichever government Anne Tolley was referring to. Christian says of them:

The ads on TV tell you what bullying is and that you should not have to put up with it, but what they should be doing is telling people not to bully in the first place. Their focus is wrong.

Christian has made the same observation and criticism of his school's attempts to manage the bullying he has suffered all year. The school's focus was all about what Christian could do to minimise the bullying. Yes, he is annoying and he should work on that and yes strategies should cut both ways; Christian accepted all this but he still felt that the primary focus should be on the unacceptability of the behaviour.

Christian was not bullied as horrifically as the cases that make the news but this year he has been hit, shoved, knocked to the ground, attacked with a screw driver, shoved into a wall, been surrounded by a group of kids unable to escape, had his property taken, been made the butt of school jokes and filmed on someone's cell phone camera having his pants pulled down which led him to weeks of internet searching after school for the footage. He has come home with cuts, bruises and has lived in fear of returning to school and with self-doubt. Yet no one got stood down or expelled for hurting him all year and to our knowledge, no one's parents were contacted over their treatment of him. There were very few repeat offenders over the year, it was more there was a culture of bullying that many kids engaged in.

The school, following the ministry's guidelines, instead had multiple meetings with us and worked hard with their staff putting strategies to protect Christian in place - they even waived their policy of waiting for a year of knowing the child and put him in one of the top streams mid-year after I suggested that the brighter kids might not respond with their fists so readily. The kids did get detentions, were talked to and told off and made to apologise and most did not re-offend against Christian but none of these, we and Christian felt, were sufficient consequences as none of them countered the culture problem the school and Christian faced.

What we want is an end to the focus on what the victim should be doing and the need to understand the bully and a return to the message that bullying is unnaceptable and will not be tolerated. Zero tolerance sends a very loud and clear message but zero tolerance is not govt approved. Let's hope that that changes under National.

Alistair told me I had to write this so its all his fault!

Our 7 year old son Noah has a 'girlfriend' who he 'is going to marry one day.' His 'girlfriend' also turned 7 yesterday and had a party. His 'girlfriend's' mum went to a heap of trouble to decorate the house, make the food and plan all sorts of fun activities to make sure their daughter and all her little friends had heaps of fun. She did way more games than I do, I draw the line at decorating the cake and making just one pass-the-parcel (which I make my teenagers wrap and supervise the execution of).

Back when I was a child (did I really just use that sentence?) pass the parcel was completely random; some kids got to remove 3 layers and other kids missed out completely. The excitement and anticipation when the music stopped was all centred on getting to be the person who got to take the wrapper off and hoping you got to take the wrapper off on the very last layer. If you sulked because you missed out, you were a poor loser and got a lecture from your parents about good sportsmanship. These days, in our PC culture, for the kids its all about getting the lollipop or other goodie taped to each layer and every parent I know - including me (well my teenagers) - 'cheats' and makes sure that every kid gets a turn taking off a layer before letting the game run randomly.

The party progressed to musical chairs. My kids have not really played it that much (as I am slack, see above) but they, along with the others, picked up the rules and with big smiles of anticipation got ready to play.

Now unlike pass the parcel, musical chairs does not lend itself so well to PC-ising.

The music stopped, they all scrambled for chairs, one kid missed out, got eliminated from the game and promptly began crying. There were cries of "Oh... poor thing... its just a practice run" and the rules were re-explained and the heat was run again. A different kid missed out this time and promptly began crying. The next round was played and each chair was removed every kid was reduced to tears when they lost, even my children!

I know the families that were present quite well and I know that all of them despise the PC culture and have tried to raise their kids in a manner counter to it, us included, yet seeing all of our kids fall apart because they lost really gave us pause. The host parents were horrified that all the guest were in tears (barring the kid who won), they had been trying to make the party fun for everyone afterall. They categorically stated they would never play musical chairs at their parties again and apologised to the parents who by then all had at least one crying child on their laps.

The episode was really disturbing. We all began questioning how the children of today's culture are going to cope with real loss in life and knocks to their confidence. I wondered what it would mean for their ability to persevere, to believe in themselves when life sent them knocks, Alistair wondered about the impact long term on suicide rates - how will teenagers cope if parents shield them from 'losing' or always try to correct situations where their child 'misses' out? Obviously the musical chairs is just a symptom and not the cause but I think it made us see that despite our efforts to the contrary we are raising a generation of kids whose definition of 'fairness' and 'equality' is something quite different from what it should be.

Last night I really felt for the host parents' embarassment, completely empathised with it and mentally congratulated myself on my slackness of never having more than one party game and that game never being musical chairs! However, on reflection I have decided I owe it to my kids to add musical chairs to my party-games repertoire and I am going to stop allowing my teenagers to 'cheat' at pass the parcel - I might even take the lollipops off the wrappers too!