Is this a bully?
What do you think about this?:
On Wednesday, a Murry, Utah-based woman named Ally Olsen, 41, discovered that her fiancé’s 10-year-old daughter, Kaylee, was bullying a classmate. Kaylee’s teacher had emailed Olsen, explaining that the girl had been teasing a student for the past three weeks because of how she dressed. As a result, the victim no longer wanted to come to school.
What was the bully’s crime? This:
“When I received the email, I was confused because just a few weeks ago, Kaylee had received an award from her principal for stopping a bullying incident at school,” Olsen told Yahoo! Shine. “I confronted Kaylee who explained that she had called another girl ”˜sleazy’ for wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a tank top. We’ve taught Kaylee to dress conservatively but never expected her to be judgmental.”
But had the bullied girl in fact been wearing Daisy Dukes and a halter top to school for three weeks? And if so, why? I know dress codes have relaxed since my school days, but are there no codes at all any more?
And one of my pet peeves is this reluctance to “judge” anyone. We judge people all the time. And if we don’t, have we no opinions and no standards of behavior? Or was Kaylee’s crime to have told the girl she looked “sleazy,” which may have been nothing less than the absolute truth—and a relatively polite way to put it, at that, compared to some of the words she could have used instead.
What Kaylee did is not the same as teasing someone about an inherent trait that person cannot help—having a big nose, or red hair, or ears that stick out. This is about clothing (inappropriate clothing, I might add) that is worn voluntarily, clothing that can be changed quite easily, and clothing that is actually inappropriate. Perhaps Kaylee was merely trying to do the job the school had abdicated.
And another thing about that school—does it, by any chance, have a school counselor? Because having the school counselor talk to the two girls might be a nice start, rather than sending a vague letter home that doesn’t even really seem to describe the purported bullying incident or incidents in any way that could help the parents determine what really happened.
At any rate, Ally Olson came up with an interesting punishment for Kaylee. She took the girl to a store, noted clothes that the girl said she hated, and made Kaylee wear them to school despite her tears.
Oh, and one more thing. Note that Ms. Olson is described as being the fiancé of Kaylee’s father. So what was she doing laying down the law for Kaylee? And what on earth was Kaylee’s teacher doing emailing Olson, if in fact that’s what happened?
In general, it’s asking for trouble to have a stepparent do heavy-duty discipline like that (as opposed to everyday discipline), unless the offense is an act in progress that must be stopped immediately with no time to consult with the actual parent. But Olson is not even Kaylee’s stepparent, she’s in loco step-parentis, a “fiancé” (a word I’ve long ago learned that in these situations with children tends to mean a live-in girlfriend without a wedding actually being planned). So why is she in charge? Has the father abdicated his role, too? Has he designated discipline to her? Or did he approve of the method she came up with?
Quite a bunch of confused messages here for Kaylee, who seems to be voicing the requisite amount of contrition. Whether she’s telling the truth or not about feeling sorry is hard to know:
Although Kaylee cried, the next day she headed to school wearing one of the outfits under a coat that she had zipped up to her neck. “When she came home that afternoon, Kaylee said the kids laughed at her for wearing ”˜pajamas.’ She also felt so guilty that she pulled her classmate aside and apologized for her behavior the previous day.” To solidify the punishment, Olsen snapped a photo of Kaylee wearing the outfit (her face was blurred to protect her identity) and posted it on Facebook.
So let’s see. Because Kaylee expressed disapproval and judged as sleazy a classmate’s sleazy clothing, she’s called a bully and made to wear clothes that cause other kids to bully her by laughing at her. Should they be made to wear ugly clothing the next day and be laughed at in turn?
What actually happened, though, was that Kaylee was punished again, this time for defending herself—from being bullied!:
By then, Olsen decided that Kaylee had suffered enough””until she learned that she had gotten into another altercation with a second girl. “When Kaylee explained how she had spoken rudely to a friend who was picking on her clothes, I decided that she needed to wear another embarrassing outfit the following day,” said Olsen.
But Kaylee seems to have learned her lesson:
“What people don’t understand is that Kaylee genuinely learned from this experience. She actually thanked me for making her go through that,” said Olsen.
Ah, but what lesson did Kaylee learn? It just might be this one: don’t be honest about your feelings or opinions, don’t defend yourself, and say whatever you need to say to get your father’s girlfriend off your back.
This is just a weird story. I’d really like to know what role her father had in all of this – is he OK with his fiance forcing Kaylee to wear revealing clothing and then posting it on facebook?
What would Olsen do if Kaylee had judged a fellow student for promiscuity or drug use?
Lizzy: it also caught my eye because the comments after the article (at least the ones I read; I certainly didn’t read them all) uniformly applauded Ms. Olson’s actions, and no one seemed to wonder about the father or about Olson’s dubious status as parent.
It’s heartbreaking how provocatively dressed young girls are these days. The parents from all socio economic backgrounds seem to encourage it. I don’t know what’s going on.
IMO, its Olsen the fiance, who’s the bully in this drama. Sadly, this story is a pretty good example of how morally confused this country has and is becoming.
What’s going on is a societal breakdown in moral consensus. Children, teens and young adults have been fed (by parents, teachers, media, etc) a confused, contradictory mishmash of self-indulgent precepts that result in hedonistic, licentious behavior.
“We’ve taught Kaylee to dress conservatively but never expected her to be judgmental.”
This is the other part of the story that is weird. Kaylee has demonstrated that what her father and Olsen taught her about modest apparel stuck. She not only dresses modestly but she is applying her parent-approved judgement on her classmates’ apparel as well. The misstep wasn’t her judgement, but in her calling out a student for immodest apparel (no idea how catty she was or how many times she did it). They should be focused on how Kaylee chose to express her judgement, not the judgement itself. A formal apology to the other student would have been sufficient, no? The shaming was overkill and just as malicious as Kaylee’s original transgression.
I think the key here is that it’s un-PC to “repress” anyone’s sexuality. My nephew is a junior in high school, and is good student and athlete. He’s also a nice kid. A new girl arrived at school and proceeded to have sex with just about every boy in school. When she propositioned my nephew, via text message, he responded with something rude telling her to leave him alone. Did her mother call my sister? No. Did she call the school? No. She called the police, who went to his baseball game and threatened to arrest him. He didn’t threaten her in any way, just rudely told her to stay away from him. My mother would have killed me for propositioning boys.
When another nephew was 6-years old (6!) he got sent home from school for an incident in the restroom. He was washing his hands and a boy came up behind him and pulled down his pants and underwear. My nephew asked, “What, are you gay?” Yep, suspended. But the boy who pulled down his pants was seen as the injured party. Strange world.
This sort of crap goes on all the time in Utah. This is why I always shake my head when people keep referring to Utah as the “reddest state in the Union”; we have all the same nanny state, big-government crap as any other state, just that it’s all enforced and enacted by Republicans!
Preparation for a police state is moving along nicely.
Racism had a face and it was a 13-year-old girl – Adam Goodes (Aussie footballer)
And one of my pet peeves is this reluctance to “judge” anyone. We judge people all the time.
Libs judge wingnuts on a 24-7 basis. Racist, troglodyte, uneducated, and so forth.
Still dont get femnist logic do you
Maybe a few mor slutwalks n your light willcome on???
The Japanese dress codes are a combination of liberal and extremely traditional.
When I first read about the story, I thought the girl might have been making fun of the other girl for wearing out-of-style clothes from Walmart or something, in which case the punishment might have been more appropriate.
Now that I read about what really went on, now I think it’s bizarre and not appropriate at all. And from a person who’s not even a legal guardian no less! The girl is probably scarred for life now.
The slope is getting steeper and slippier.
Schools are designed to produce the next generation in Leftist shocktroops for the new Utopia.
Shock troops aren’t worth much when they don’t obey the military speech and dress regulations. As determined by the Left, not you.
At what point does something like this cross the line from punishment to psychological abuse?
I was raised in a fairly strict family. Some of the behavior I see in kids today (swearning, talking back to your elders…not just parents and stuff like that.) and while severe punishments like spankings were rare, they were not unheard of. The simple threat of my father’s belt was usually more than enough to get me or my brothers to straighten up. But my parents never subjected me or either of my brothers to public humiliation as a form of punishment. That was a line that was, and should never be, crossed.
Let’s just say that after reading the article, and seeing the little girl’s pictures with the article, I got so damn angry that I cannot describe my contempt for this woman without swearing, and leave it at that.
KRB
In my view, spanking is not a severe punishment. I also believe it to be greatly misunderstood as to its utility. Severe punishment; whether physical, emotional or intellectual should never be applied to a child.
Spanking should only be done with the hand, it should be relatively brief and never applied when angry. It is only appropriate after children start walking, should be rarely needed and not be used after they are 7. Those are the years when they understand parental direction and NO! but haven’t reached the age of independently understanding right from wrong.
Its value is in the physical shock that reinforces the strongest parental disapproval of the child’s behavior and it’s most effective in the earlier years when children lack reasoning ability.
Modern parents apparently fail to understand that it is an age appropriate, parental tool that employs the body’s desire to avoid pain, too much is certainly abusive, too little as determined by the child’s own behavior, encourages self-indulgence and inconsideration of others.
I choose to briefly spank my daughter but a very few times, after that a firm no was all that was ever required when immediate corrective behavior was needed.
When the child knows they have unconditional love, they want to behave, when they also receive loving guidance and reasoned discipline, they understand what is required of them.
I am with KRB. The step-girlfriend is the bully here. If indeed Kaylee’s behavior warranted punishment or reprimand etc (and I’m not persuaded based on the sketchy details that it was) then it should have been carried out in private. Subjecting a child to public humiliation is stepping way over the line. She added insult to injury with the facebook post. I also find it hard to believe that Kaylee was grateful for the lesson. That’s the step-monster’s version after all.
Gotta love how these adults seemingly give no thought to the lesson they’re teaching with their living arrangement (unmarried raising kids and/or stepkid(s) but “judging others” is a punishable offense.
The fiancée sounds like a real piece of work. That poor girl is never going to confide in her again. I also get the idea that the fiancée was doing this more for her own self-gratification than to teach the girl a lesson: Sends her to school in a hated/immodest outfit and posts pictures of her wearing these clothes on social media and then (I’m assuming) calls the newspaper with the story and further humiliates the girl. I too would like to know where dad was in this whole episode.
This is truly outrageous.
Seems to be a well-grounded group all ’round. Somebody (the mother? is there a mother? or was the kid bought from some passing Gypsies?) got the ball rolling when the little girl was named after the mechanic in Firefly.
Better the two girls would have had a “cat fight” and settled it between themselves. 🙂 It seems to me that the interventions of “adults” in the case – both school and the fiancee- made things worse.
There are two verses from the Bible that our society now takes out of context to push an agenda. One is Luke 6:37, which has now been twisted out of the greater context of scriptures to mean there can be no societal standards, lest we “judge”. The funny/sad/aggravating thing about it is the way it is misused means that just declaring someone is being “judgemental” would be a violation of the command if it meant what society seems to think it means! The other out of context verse is to quote the ten commandements “Thou shalt not kill” to mean there is never justified homicide, when even a casual reference to context would reveal it was talking about “murder” and not prohibiting all homicide!
The “judge not” verse is also repeated in Matthew chapter 7: 1….only a few verses later the scripture points out “…that by their fruit you will recognize them.” Sounds like the scripture definately WAS telling us that we are allowed to discern evil from good!
LisaM, I suspect they are trying to get us to the point where resisting homosexual advances is considered a hate crime!
Saw this at Ace’s place:
“It’s not about the nail!”
http://vimeo.com/66753575
Too damned funny. For some reason, it sorts well with this thread.
I am distressed by the fact that a large percent of the population only owns one adjective, and it starts with “f”. Dress live a tramp, talk like a tramp.
We’re living in bizarro world. What’s bad is good, what is good is bad and the bad thing is to say that something IS bad. I and my fiancé are getting married in a couple of months. I have two young step daughters and thank GOD that we seem to live in a nice area in Tx where the school is full of good common sense and standards exist. I hope to God it is not an isolated oasis and there are more places like this. And Neo, I am SO with you in this “judgement” idiocy. If you HAVE an opinion, you’re opinionated and everyone is terrified to say what they believe (I don’t give a damn what people think and speak my mind). Sometimes me and my fiancé read the news (just scan the Drudge Report) and half jokingly plead “Jesus PLEASE don’t wait! Come back!”. You can see it played out in the mass ignoring or excusing the Islamist insanity while JUDGING Judeo/Christian morality as anathema. We have a bench sitting Basketballl player saying he’s gay and he’s a hero and Tim Tebow is a pariah for being an open Christian. It’s NUTS I tell ya!
So the girl’s punishment for being a bully was to get bullied by her dad’s girlfriend and classmates? And why weren’t her classmates in turn punished for their role?
And the bullied girl, in response to getting called out for dressing provocatively, continued to wear the same type of clothes for 2 weeks, knowing she would be picked on? Given that she was supposedly only left with the option of not showing up for school, that would imply her entire wardrobe was bought from the “lil miss slut” catalog.
Also, I guess it’s OK for 10 year old girls to dress as skanky as they want as long as they tattle on the kid with the toy GI Joe gun.
“Bullying” is a new offense, seized on by the Leftist educational establishment because no one can be in favor of bullying, just like no one can be opposed to “Smart Growth” for Comprehensive Planning (What? You favor Stupid Growth?)
But the devil’s in the details. What is your School Board’s (or other venue’s) definition of bullying? Press them on the exact words; see if they even exist.
My Webster’s 3rd Ed. defines the verb, bully, as” to intimidate by an overbearing swaggering demeanor or by threats; to act the part of a bully”. But there are also listed in Webster’s a bunch of “bully” nouns and adjectives, some of them quite favorable…see TR’s “Bully pulpit” at the start of the Progressive Movement.
My local public school has a category of “cyberbullying”, which is reportable and formally actionable even though the event occurred well beyond the hours of school jurisdiction. This is the assumption of power not formally granted by anyone save the School Board. The camel’s nose under the tent of the home.
The charge of “Bullying” is an instant warning to me that a “hate crime” claim is being invoked, and I beware. I am in no way commenting on the case at hand. I am speaking on principles.
One final thought: “Bullying”, as practiced when I was a kid, was usually a normative process. Noe it enables deviancy.
Richard, this sort of nonsense isn’t a Utah thing. It’s an idiot thing, and that bully “fiance” isn’t what Utah is built on. We have plenty of statist jerks here, yes, that’s inherent in .gov, I think, but this woman’s behavior is screwed up. If anything, from Murray, she’s more likely to be part of the “urban” part of Utah, which is more Californicated than anything.