SHAME ON THE SHAMERS
SHAME ON THE SHAMERS
Nobody likes a bully. Nobody.
And that includes the bully himself.
It's the reason bullies bully in the first place.
Bullies hate themselves and project that hate on others, usually they ones they perceive as inferior to themselves.
Of course, bullying comes in many forms: physical, emotional, mental, positional.
Kids bully kids, adults bully kids and adults bully adults.
Bullying is never okay, but there's something exceptionally unseemly about the recent potshots at Joe Biden's well documented lifelong struggle with stuttering.
Recent events have me thinking of all the young stutterers I've worked with, as a speech pathologist, over the years.
And it's a painful reminder of just how cruel people can be.
As if having a learning disability isn't tough enough, now there's a layer of emotional piling on that makes the journey even tougher.
What's been going on makes me very sad.
And it has begun at the top.
Donald Trump, of course, has famously derided Biden as "tongue tied" and as a "low IQ individual."
BULLY!
Of course we could get into a whole "pot calling the kettle black"thing here, but suffice it to say that Uncle Joe is neither tongue-tied nor a low IQ individual.
Next...Trump's former Press Hackretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, ridiculed Biden on social media after his poignant shout-out to child stutterers at the end of a recent Democratic Debate.
BULLY!
Immediately, social media bit back and Sanders was eviscerated for her tone-deaf and incendiary comments.
And now...proving the nut doesn't fall far from the orange topped rotted-out tree, yet another Trump is at it, carrying on the family legacy.
Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the current occupant of the White House recently has gotten into the act.
At recent Republican-sponsored event she proclaimed, "I feel kind of sad for Joe Biden...every time he comes on stage, I'm like 'Joe, can you get it out? Let's get the words out Joe.'"
BULLY!
Jack Owens, a long time friend of Biden's, points to Joe's 60 years of dealing with this sort of thing as real character building: "Trump is a bully, and Joe has been standing up to bullies his entire life. Joe's stuttering I think, is one of the principal reasons - a major, major reason - that he is the good and compassionate and kind man that he is."
Biden has been very forthcoming about how tough his early years were, complete with schoolyard beatings, and incessant ridicule, not only from fellow classmates (who nicknamed him Joe Impedimenta and Dash - because his speech sounded like Morse Code), but by his nun-teachers, one of whom would call on him in class this way, Mr. Bu-bu-bu-biden.
In a speech to the American Institute of Stuttering, Biden said "I can think of nothing else that has ever stripped me of my dignity as quickly and as profoundly and as thoroughly as when I stuttered in grade school," but, on the flip side, Biden also credits the struggle as "the single most defining thing in my life."
Further he says to kids with stutters, "God's gift to me was my stuttering, but don't
let your learning disability define you. Time and time again, my parents taught me that being different is no barrier to success and the measure of a man is not the amount of times he's been knocked down but how quickly he gets up."
This is a message we, as parents and educators, must deliver when we come in contact with kids with any learning disabilities, speech or anxiety disorders, or other issues, whether they be stuttering, autism, dyslexia, selective mutism or any of the myriad other challenges a young one might face.
Another big proponent of getting into the heads of struggling kids in a positive way is Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, childhood stutterer and the architect of the "Miracle on the Hudson", emergency commercial plane landing.
In the wake of those anti-stuttering comments from the Trump regime, Sully recently penned a New York Times Op-Ed piece about what he calls the current "culture of cruelty."
Sullenberger wrote: "What might a child who stutters, as I did, feel when they hear a grown-up on a public stage trying to make a bunch of other adults laugh by ridiculing a public figure who also stutters? So to every child who feels today what I felt, after hearing those cruel remarks by an adult who should know better, here is what I want you to know: You are fine, just as you are. You can do any job you dream of when you grow up."
He is about the best proof of that truism you'll ever find.
And furthermore, this real life American Hero says:
"A speech disorder is a lot easier to treat than a character defect!"
In other words, kids, it's not you: it's THEM!
Shame on the Shamers!
Nobody likes a bully. Nobody.
And that includes the bully himself.
It's the reason bullies bully in the first place.
Bullies hate themselves and project that hate on others, usually they ones they perceive as inferior to themselves.
Of course, bullying comes in many forms: physical, emotional, mental, positional.
Kids bully kids, adults bully kids and adults bully adults.
Bullying is never okay, but there's something exceptionally unseemly about the recent potshots at Joe Biden's well documented lifelong struggle with stuttering.
Recent events have me thinking of all the young stutterers I've worked with, as a speech pathologist, over the years.
And it's a painful reminder of just how cruel people can be.
As if having a learning disability isn't tough enough, now there's a layer of emotional piling on that makes the journey even tougher.
What's been going on makes me very sad.
And it has begun at the top.
Donald Trump, of course, has famously derided Biden as "tongue tied" and as a "low IQ individual."
BULLY!
Of course we could get into a whole "pot calling the kettle black"thing here, but suffice it to say that Uncle Joe is neither tongue-tied nor a low IQ individual.
Next...Trump's former Press Hackretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, ridiculed Biden on social media after his poignant shout-out to child stutterers at the end of a recent Democratic Debate.
BULLY!
Immediately, social media bit back and Sanders was eviscerated for her tone-deaf and incendiary comments.
And now...proving the nut doesn't fall far from the orange topped rotted-out tree, yet another Trump is at it, carrying on the family legacy.
Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the current occupant of the White House recently has gotten into the act.
At recent Republican-sponsored event she proclaimed, "I feel kind of sad for Joe Biden...every time he comes on stage, I'm like 'Joe, can you get it out? Let's get the words out Joe.'"
BULLY!
Jack Owens, a long time friend of Biden's, points to Joe's 60 years of dealing with this sort of thing as real character building: "Trump is a bully, and Joe has been standing up to bullies his entire life. Joe's stuttering I think, is one of the principal reasons - a major, major reason - that he is the good and compassionate and kind man that he is."
Biden has been very forthcoming about how tough his early years were, complete with schoolyard beatings, and incessant ridicule, not only from fellow classmates (who nicknamed him Joe Impedimenta and Dash - because his speech sounded like Morse Code), but by his nun-teachers, one of whom would call on him in class this way, Mr. Bu-bu-bu-biden.
In a speech to the American Institute of Stuttering, Biden said "I can think of nothing else that has ever stripped me of my dignity as quickly and as profoundly and as thoroughly as when I stuttered in grade school," but, on the flip side, Biden also credits the struggle as "the single most defining thing in my life."
Further he says to kids with stutters, "God's gift to me was my stuttering, but don't
let your learning disability define you. Time and time again, my parents taught me that being different is no barrier to success and the measure of a man is not the amount of times he's been knocked down but how quickly he gets up."
This is a message we, as parents and educators, must deliver when we come in contact with kids with any learning disabilities, speech or anxiety disorders, or other issues, whether they be stuttering, autism, dyslexia, selective mutism or any of the myriad other challenges a young one might face.
Another big proponent of getting into the heads of struggling kids in a positive way is Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, childhood stutterer and the architect of the "Miracle on the Hudson", emergency commercial plane landing.
In the wake of those anti-stuttering comments from the Trump regime, Sully recently penned a New York Times Op-Ed piece about what he calls the current "culture of cruelty."
Sullenberger wrote: "What might a child who stutters, as I did, feel when they hear a grown-up on a public stage trying to make a bunch of other adults laugh by ridiculing a public figure who also stutters? So to every child who feels today what I felt, after hearing those cruel remarks by an adult who should know better, here is what I want you to know: You are fine, just as you are. You can do any job you dream of when you grow up."
He is about the best proof of that truism you'll ever find.
And furthermore, this real life American Hero says:
"A speech disorder is a lot easier to treat than a character defect!"
In other words, kids, it's not you: it's THEM!
Shame on the Shamers!