I can’t help but feel a profound sadness lately when I hear the way my neighbors talk to one another and to their children.  These days, some parents are constantly going on about how their children are disrespectful and rude.  Yet when I walk down the halls of my apartment building or sit out on the back porch, I constantly hear them berating their loved ones.  Sometimes its their spouses or significant others they are insulting.  Other times, I hear them verbally attack their kids.  It breaks my heart to hear some of the things I hear.

This afternoon was a perfect example.  I don’t know what apartment I was hearing it out of (it could of even been at the building up the hill from me, since the sound travels down to us at times), but as I stood on the porch, planting a couple of starters of lavender and rosemary that I’d picked up, I heard a mom yelling at their child.  I don’t know how old the child was, though by her voice, she sounded like she was younger.  The mom was yelling at the little girl, telling her she was a worthless pile of shit, that it was no wonder her father left and that she wished she’d get lost.  And all you hear is this little girl crying, telling her mom she loves her and that she’s sorry for being bad.

Now I don’t know what this little girl did to get yelled at in the first place or to think she was “being bad”, but whatever it was, it didn’t deserve the mother saying the things she did to the kid.  And this was mild compared to some of the things I hear come out of some of the parents mouths around here.  It breaks my heart to hear the things that I do and I can’t help but be angered by it.

As someone who is infertile and likely never going to have her own children, I just want to go up to these mothers and tell them how I envy them their children.  And how their son or their daughter is a wonderful gift they should cherish and love.  I want to beg them to stop speaking the way they do to their kids and I want to slap them silly when they say their kids are disrespectful or talk back to them.

Of course they do!  If a person, from the time they are born, are constantly hearing others yell and disrespect others, they learn that behavior and that it is okay to act that way.  They learn that it is okay to call others names, and to berate them for whatever differences they may have. Their parents tell them how much they aren’t wanted, how worthless they are and they think its okay to talk that way to others.  After all, if the person who brought them into this world and is supposed to love them and protect them unconditionally treats them this way, why wouldn’t it be okay for them to treat others the same way?

Why has bullying gotten so bad?  Because from a young age, our kids are exposed to violence and disrespect from so many angles and many parents do nothing to censor it.  I agree to a point that the kids who are being bullied might need to learn to let it go and not bother them.  But the kids who are doing the bullying need to be stopped as well.  And this starts at home.

It is a cycle of learned behavior.  Kids who are bullies are likely bullied at home or see constantly that this kind of behavior is okay and acceptable.  They don’t have anyone setting an example for them to behave any other way.  And so the cycle continues and when they have children, those kids learn its okay to behave that way.

I wish there was a way I could help these poor kids in my building who are being talked to this way.  Hearing a child cry because she’s being told she is worthless and better off dead isn’t right and makes my heart hurt.

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