'How to deal with a cry bully'

Just recently, I was asked to give a talk in a school because a certain child – let’s call her ‘Niamh’ – was causing a lot of problems as a result of her bullying behaviour. I had barely put up my first slide in the presentation when the first sob emanated from Niamh. To my utter amazement, Niamh’s sobs continued unabated throughout the talk as she explained loudly at every opportunity how she was the victim of terrible bullying within the school. Here I talk about the 'cry bully' for mummypages.ie and how to  deal with one.  

‘Boys and Girls’ by Stella O Malley, Sunday Independent 'Life' magazine, 13 July 2017

I could be a 42-year-old man. I could be walking around with a beard, with a deep voice and even, God forbid, with wedding tackle. The very thought of it chills me to the bone – in fact it makes me want to cry. Thankfully, I’m not a man; I’m a very happily married mother of two children and, these days, I’m very comfortable in my powerful femininity. But when I was a kid I was a misfit and I aggressively rejected my female identity.

I was born in 1974 and I was an obsessive tomboy from as far back as I can remember. Everywhere I went I was asked the ubiquitous question, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ I never liked the question – I didn’t really feel like either at the time – but when pressed I would always answer, ‘A boy’. Although I was certainly considered a total freak while growing up in Blanchardstown in the 1980s most people just raised their eyebrows and let me get on with it. I was given the freedom to be a crazy mixed-up kid for a while – nobody suggested hormone therapy.

What concerns me is that had I been born 30 years later, hormone therapy would probably have been suggested – indeed if I was 12 today, I would certainly already be taking puberty blockers and I would be stalking internet sites requesting hormone therapy. I am fully sure that if I had been born 30 years later I would, without question, have transitioned from an unhappy female into a very unhappy male.

Sweet lies: The danger of our 'treat' culture

It’s just so tiresome for parents to be forced on the defensive every single place they go. On a family day out to the zoo or to a theme park - ‘No, you can’t have an ice cream’. Going swimming and as they walk into the leisure centre - ‘No, you can’t have a smoothie’. A trip to the cinema and, yet again, parents are forced into the hard-faced negative - ‘No junk food – the cinema is the treat.’ Even in the chemist - ‘No you can’t have a lollypop’! All these ‘no’s’ are exhausting, and they set a negative and irritable tone to every outing with the kids. In this article for mummypages.ie, I explore 'Sweet lies: The danger of our treat culture'. 

Helping the anxious child

Eckhart Tolle nailed it when he said, ‘Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful purpose.’ Anxious people all too often believe that they need to worry about certain events so that they will be adequately prepared for every eventuality, but this is a fallacy – worry actually saps our mental strength, and pessimistic people have been proven to be less able to handle disasters than optimistic people. In this article for mummypages.ie, I write about 'Helping the anxious child'