I've been admonishing my children to "not call names" practically since they learned to speak. It seems to start in pre-school or on the playground . . ."doodie head", "slow poke", "Messy Marvin" . . .all innocent words, but not nice and not necessary. As they get older it moves from the playgrounds to schools and sporting events.
A recent study found that in a single school year, two out of three teens reported being verbally or physically harassed because of their appearance, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression, race, ethnicity, disability or religion; either actual OR perceived.
That just blows my mind. . .TWO out of every THREE teenagers. What has happened to manners and simple acts of kindness? Have we reduced them to Facebook Quote Posts and not our everyday actions? Next time you're watching a television program with your kids, pay attention to how the characters speak to each other, and use it to open a conversation with your own child. For additional ideas, check out this tip sheet for parents.
No Name-Calling week was created by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network) to promote educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of ALL kinds and provide schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate name-calling int her schools and communities.
You can learn more about No Name-Calling week at http://www.nonamecallingweek.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home.html or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nonamecallingweek. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter, using the hashtag #wordscanhurt
catch you soon -
note - I did not receive compensation for this post. As always all opinions are my very own.
It's so important that we stop this culture of name-calling so our kids can grow up in a world where people lift each other up rather than constantly tearing them down.
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