As I was sipping on my morning coffee, scrolling through my Twitter feed to check the goings on of the world according to Twitter, I couldn’t believe all the negativity and insult. Yeah, I am forty years old and I am still amazed on a daily basis how immature and mean and down right stupid some people and their behavior can be.

Not to get all political, but the feeling is there and I gotta say it. “Anti-Bullying” and “Zero Tolerance” – two terms that I personally think hold no water. Why you ask? Look around…the problem is bigger than ever. In my life I have been bullied. In my daughters life, she has been bullied and at one point almost pressured into being a bully herself until she realized what was going on, came home and talked to me about it…that was a fun conversation. Long story short – her conscience kicked in, she owned up to it to me, her mother (the scariest thing for a kid to do) and apologized to her friend.

What I am getting at is this. Everyday, seriously, EVERYDAY I see or hear grown women being a bully, in front of or directed at their kids. Case and point;

– Mother and daughter come into the shop wanting to return a flat iron, with no box and no receipt. I explain that I need the receipt for proof of purchase and the manufacturer’s warranty states that we need the box as well. The mother, in front of her daughter, leans over the counter, yells “what the F*&! is your problem, just take it back!” and then throws it at me.

– Mother and daughter come in the shop and the mother says, out loud, with other customers around “Look at her hair! It is so oily and gross!”. Nice.

– A woman comes into the store, complaining that her “fat, lazy kids can’t even buy their own hairspray.”. Mother of the year right there folks.

– Mother and daughter refer to each other as “stupid” and “idiot”. Guess I should be more up to date on the newest trending names.

– A woman calls me a “stupid liar” when I say I don’t have the product she is looking for. Tells her daughter, in front of me “sales people are assholes”. When she realizes she is in the wrong store, instead of apologizing, she tugs on her child’s arm, and pulls them out of the store yelling “Why didn’t you tell me we were in the wrong store?”. – my guess…they didn’t want to mess with crazy.

My all time favorite is when people use the phone/Facebook/texting or Twitter as their shield of bravery. The way I see it, if you won’t say it to someone’s face – you probably shouldn’t say it at all. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and from what I see and hear there are a lot of ’em out there. Everyone is also entitled not to listen to an opinion. It is time to grow up a little. It is time to be the grown ups, it is time to be the parent to our kids not their friends. We can be their friends when they are 18. How do you expect your kids to be kind and not be a bully when they see you scream at a perfect stranger, or hear you call a salesperson an asshole? How do you expect them to say a kind word when they have never heard one.

Seriously, does it really matter in your daily life if you don’t agree with the new book a celebrity wrote? If it does, you need a new hobby, I hear knitting is fun. If you don’t like someone’s tweets…un-follow them. Don’t like their face on Facebook…unfriend them. If you don’t like it, don’t look.

When a child is born, they don’t know what kindness is, someone has to teach them. A child doesn’t know what a bully is or how to be one. Someone has to teach them. What lesson are you going to teach today?