Happy Friday!!

Hi friends! How are you? Do you have fun plans lined up for your weekend? I'm going stateside for a friend's reception while the hubby takes care of little miss. I can't wait to visit some friends I haven't seen in a long time. I'm also really excited for my husband and little girl to have their own time together. She just lights up around him and thinks he's pretty much the funniest man in town.
Do you have little ones who returned to school this week? If so, please give this article a read. I'm not a religious person, so even thought the article has a bit of a religious slant, the message it sends to kids is spot on. The focus is on being brave and standing up for kids who you see being teased or bullied for being different.
This is an excerpt from it:

"We do not care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest. There will be lots of contests at school, and we don’t care if you win a single one of them. We don’t care if you get straight As. We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess. We don’t care if you are your teacher’s favorite or not. We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most Pokemon cards or coolest gadgets. We just don’t care.

We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done.

We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.

Kind people are brave people. Brave is not a feeling that you should wait for. It is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

Trust me, baby, it is. It is more important.

Don’t try to be the best this year, honey.

Just be grateful and kind and brave. That’s all you ever need to be."

Were you ever bullied in school? I was bullied by two girls who I thought were my friends, named Tejinder and Muriel, in grade 3. They would stay after school and sabotage my projects, rip apart my art work, pull my plants out of the dirt that I was growing for science class, scribble in my notebooks, anything they could to try and make me cry. They would sneak up behind me and shove me face down on the ground (I still have a scar to remind me), call me names and get into fist fights with me(of which I held my own in). It wasn't their behaviour that upset me (well, it kind of sucked), but it was the fact that I kept waking up each morning hoping that they would act differently and be my friends again that saddens me the most. I didn't recognize that I deserved better. I was like a dog who wags her tail each time her owner comes home even though the owner is abusive. A wonderful set of girls took me in as their friend and it seemed to throw Tejinder and Muriel into a tailspin. They tried their hardest to lure me back. It seemed like their purpose, of having someone to  project all of their anger upon, was now leaving them lost. In hindsight, I am fearful of how Tejinder and Muriel's home lives must have been that bullying was part of their agenda. Teach your kids kindness. Teach them to be brave and stand up for those who need help. I was so thankful for my new circle of girls who treated me like a friend instead of a proverbial punching bag. Kids shouldn't go to school in fear or make one another feel inferior because they  aren't pretty enough, smart enough, athletic enough. Just be kids. Play. Laugh. Learn. Repeat.