chats with 7th graders

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Now getting down to business; yesterday I was able to go and talk to some seventh grade students about healthy relationships and bullying.  Needless to say, I would like to apologize to anyone that knew me as a seventh grader as I am sure I was the most annoying person on earth.  I thought that it was really appropriate to be talking about these types of thing on the day before Valentine’s Day, so today I am going to share with you the presentation I gave yesterday.

First we talked about pick up lines and how to decide if they are creepy or not.  A few wonderful one – mind you these are seventh graders – Do you have a mirror in your pants because I can see myself in them. (I am hoping that they don’t really understand what that means.)  Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? (They said this one wrong like three times before one kid finally got it right) And the crème de la crème – Do you work at McDonald’s because I think you are McBeautiful.  REALLY! Yep, that just happened.  Gents, please don’t ever compare a girl to McDonalds, just saying.   The point of this activity was to let them know that they person who is receiving the attention gets to decide if you are being a creeper or not.  If you are getting unwanted attention it not okay and you have the right to have them stop.

We then started talking about bullying.  Everyone knows what bullying is, but did you ever actually look around to see how frequently it happens.  I didn’t just talk about physical bullying, but cyber bullying, emotional bullying, and much more.  While we were still talking about bullying an example happened right in front of me.  We then discussed how bullying has become almost an acceptable thing to do in our society.  If it is really bad or physical we tend to report it but the other cases are chalked up to kids being kids.  I know from experience the bullying is very hurtful and happens to adults as well as kids.

So the moral of the story is that sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, which can be hard.  I know that I still struggle with it; but you are special and have the right to be happy.  If you feel like you are being bullied, or that you are being hit on in a way that makes you uncomfortable go to someone that you can trust.  Even as adults we have an HR department that we can go to.  Workplace bullying is something that as adults we don’t really think of but take a look today to see if you or someone you work with is being bullied.

You are a wonderful person who deserves every right to live the way you want to.  You are awesome and I know it, if you have someone in your life that makes you feel less than awesome, take a look at why they are in your life.  You are amazing, I know it, and you know it, now make sure the world knows it.

You have it all & Confidence

Lyndsay