OttawaMom

Posts Tagged ‘son’

Last week was a busy one around here.  Not only did we have the usual extra curricular activities to attend (soccer, ballet, school assembly, recital etc.) but I had my very first big, non-family, cupcake order to complete and we said goodbye to my son’s best friend and his family.

In fact the cupcake order and the goodbye were related.  Just before Christmas last year, my friend S told me there was a possibility that their family would be moving to Holland, if an opportunity for her husband panned out.  Well as luck would have it for them, it did and takes them away from Ottawa for a year!!

Fast forward to a few months ago, and my friend asked me if I could come up with a Holland themed cupcake. She wanted to have a little goodbye party in each of her son’s classes at school and thought it would be great if the cupcake somehow reflected the country they would be temporary residents of.  Well the parties were last Friday, so I spent my week making chocolate tulips, to go on top of 4 dozen cupcakes.

4 Dozen cupcakes waiting to be decorated

Chocolated, molded tulips

Finished product

Needless to say the cupcakes were a big hit (who doesn’t like cake!!). DD and I attended the goodbye party in my son’s class (she’s going to miss Z as much as my son) and were treated to not only cupcakes, but a short video as well. My son’s teacher is brilliant and found an age appropriate video on Holland, so the kids could familiarize themselves with the country their classmate would be calling home for a year.

So now the parties are over, the goodbyes have been said and Z and his family have arrived safely in Holland to begin their new adventure.  Meanwhile my son and I are learning to adjust without our friends and are thankful that technology will keep them close, even though they are so far away. Oh and we are counting down the months until their return

In a strange twist of fate, the family of the boy who had been bullying my son, has moved and the boy is now attending another school.  This just happened in the last week (apparently this move had been planned all along) and it was actually a teacher that told me about it, rather than my son. Finding out via a teacher didn’t really surprise me all that much because the tales my son would bring home about this boy had actually stopped, so he was no longer a source of conversation in our house.

I say had been bullying my son because as I said in my first update on the subject, the boy and my son had started to repair their friendship and the boy was no longer hurting my son. I find it ironic that just as my son was beginning to trust this boy again, he moves.  Now my son says he is going to miss him because “Mom he was finally starting to behave nicely toward me”.

My son and this boy may have been on a new path, but I am relieved just the same.  Now it is my hope that all the progress this boy has made is not lost as he tries to fit into a new school!

I am overwhelmed with the response my post on bullying received.  Seems there are a lot more people with bullying issues then I ever imagined.

A lot has happened in the two months since my last post on this issue. Back in February, I was in contact with our school’s principal many times, as the incidents kept happening.  At that time she assured me that the child in question was being dealt with both at home and at school.  She also let me know that there was a team in place at school that was dealing with this problem and others (I can’t believe there were others in the same situation, but there were). The appropriate people at the school board had also been notified.

We are definitely now seeing some results.  The bully seems to have calmed down quite a bit both in the classroom and in the schoolyard. In fact on some days he seems like a different kid.  Seems he was after attention (perhaps not getting what he needed at home?) but didn’t have the tools to go about it the right way.  In fact in one of the sit downs my son and this boy had with the principal, when she asked him if he knew what he was doing was hurting my son, he said no but that he wanted to be friends with him. Steps were made then to keep the two of them at a distance until the boy could demonstrate better behaviour (i.e being kept in at recess, entering the school after my son).

Seems to have worked for the most part where my son and this boy are concerned. Unfortunately for this boy, he is now the target of a schoolyard/classmate bully (a very angry individual who needs more help than the school can provide, but who will get that help in the near future).  In fact, my son has been known to stick up for this boy, telling me that this new bully that has emerged is a 1000 times worse than this boy ever was. Maybe he has stopped bullying my son because he knows what it feels like now, or maybe he is now getting the attention he craved all along, I don’t think we will ever know.  I only know that I am relieved that progress is being made and the appropriate people took our concerns seriously, as they should have.

As for my son, he is happy that his parents have been sticking up for him and we are definitely starting to see more of the “old” N.  We are not completely out of the woods yet, but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.