Influencers
INFLUENCERS
The homes we grow up in shape the people we are to become. When we are young, we often worship our parents. A young child strives to find ways to win approval and love from their parents. When a child grows up in a home where criticism and shaming occur, it shapes the way they see themselves and often the way they go on to treat others. In Sliding Into Home what we thought we were seeing was Steve’s unrelenting efforts to shame, intimidate, and belittle Flip simply for the color of his skin. Because Sliding Into Home was written from Flip’s perspective, we had no way of knowing why Steve persisted in targeting Flip. It was easy to dislike him and to judge and label him a racist bully because we didn’t know his story.
Restorative Circles are based on the idea that when people sit together and share their stories they develop a deeper understanding of why a person may have done the things they did. Sharing stories, deepening understanding, and growing trust opens us to our shared humanity. None of us were born a bully, a racist or a thief. The homes we grew up in, the parents we had, the ways society labels, oppresses, elevates or discriminates against us all contribute to how we walk in the world. When we are young we tend to emulate those around us. In Sliding Into Home we are given a small window into what Steve’s world may look like. In The Making of a Bully we grow up alongside Steve as he moves through his childhood reality.
Steve’s father comes home from work and listens to Fox News every day. He spews rhetoric about immigrants and believes he’s educating his son to the threat they pose to his country and his livelihood. Steve’s mother placates, soothes, ignores, and justifies her husband’s rants leaving his father’s racist, xenophobic opinions unchallenged. Here is a sneak peek of what life feels like for Steve in his home:
"I could always tell what kind of day he’d had at work by the way he walked in the front door. Some days he’d come in with a bounce to his step and a song in his voice. “Hey there sport, whatcha doin’? Catchin’ a little tv time before I boot you out of my chair?” That was a good mood greeting. His laugh was round and deep. It travelled from his belly up the many floors of his skyscraper tall frame bursting into the room like a boombox song. I loved the feeling of it as it landed like a full body hug around my ten-year-old torso.
Other days his coming home was more like the sound of tires driving over a rumble strip warning you that you were headed into the wrong lane. The air around him was thick and the rumble would turn into a slow ride to trouble if I didn’t stay out of his way. “Are you watching tv again? Don’t you have homework? Where’s your mother?” All questions he knew the answers to.
I learned that the best way to deal with this Mack truck of a father heading into the wrong lane was to get off the road altogether. Rather than answering, Yep watching tv, I always do my homework after dinner, and Mom is in the kitchen cooking where she always is when you get home, I would quietly get up from my father’s chair and head for my room to get a start on my homework and avoid a collision."
The Making of a Bully will satisfy those who wonder where Steve and Flip’s story ends and it will invite readers to examine the messages we give our children and the ways they are impacted by what we say and don’t say.