You hear your daughter’s bloodcurdling scream:
“Mumma, they’ve kicked me out of the group.”
Seven or eight kids, ganging up on one child, not for a day or two, but again and again, over time.
What do you even do with that?
You keep telling your child not to play with kids who make her feel small.
You try to help her draw boundaries.
But she’s just a child.
All she wants is to play. All she wants is to belong.
If your child has ever been bullied, you know this ache.
The helplessness. The quiet rage.
Angry—because you wish she’d understand that you can’t force your way into a group that doesn’t want you.
Helpless—because when children decide to be cruel, what recourse do you really have?
And then, it cuts deeper.
The ringleader’s mother, with no hesitation, says,
“Well, if all the kids are ganging up on your daughter, maybe the problem is with her.”
It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?
How easy it is to look away from what’s truly wrong.
But maybe that’s just… upbringing.
Something no amount of good English or social posturing can ever fix.
This is bullying.
And as a mother, when someone—anyone—hurts my child, what rises from the deepest parts of me is something raw and ancient.
Take a guess.
I know M isn’t perfect.
She argues. She’s fiery. She fights sometimes, just like every other child.
When kids fight, they figure it out. That’s what growing up is.
But when a group repeatedly corners one child…
When the same child keeps coming home, teary-eyed and quiet…
I will go.
I will always show up when she calls.
Apparently, M is “bossy.”
And that, they say, is why this happened.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
A girl who isn’t meek.
A girl who won’t bow her head.
A girl who dares to have a voice.
Suddenly, she’s “too much.”
They really do start young, don’t they?
In some ways, I’m strangely grateful that M is seeing the world for what it is before she even turns ten.
She’s learning something hard but necessary:
That not all people, children or adults are kind.
That vileness isn’t bound by age.
These are the same children who’ve eaten at our home.
Laughed and played in our living room.
One of them even stole M’s Hot Wheels car.
She noticed. I noticed. But we let it go.
Because we believed that kindness would return as kindness.
Turns out, it doesn’t always work that way.
I don’t care how others raise their kids—whether they’re taught to toe the line, or taught to stay silent when wrong happens.
I’m just glad M questions.
That she refuses to follow rules written in someone else’s tears.
That even now, she doesn’t let cruelty shape her.
But what breaks me is when she says she couldn’t concentrate in class because of them.
Or when she wants to play, but there’s no one to play with.
When I find her pretending to be fine, wiping her tears when she thinks no one’s looking.
In those moments, my heart fractures.
Quietly.
Over and over again.
And I wouldn’t wish that pain on any mother.
Well, not the good ones.
But you see, what people forget… is that someone is always keeping score.
Every time M cries herself to sleep.
Every time she questions her worth.
Every time she is made to feel like she doesn’t belong—
The universe is watching.
Karma doesn’t forget.
Not today, not ten years from now.
The balance will be restored.
So while today you may feel smug, thinking, So what if my child bullied someone?
There will come a day when your child faces the same cruelty.
And your heart will ache in ways you never imagined.
That day, the debt will be paid.
I’m not a saint. I won’t pretend to hope you’re spared.
You do the crime, you do the time.
They say the cry of an innocent child…
and the pain of a mother watching her suffer…
never go unheard.
Let’s hope that’s true.
Because if there’s even a shred of justice in this world,
The rotten ones always fall.
Maybe not today, perhaps not tomorrow,
But eventually, they do.
And to every mother out there whose child has ever been bullied—
I see you.
I feel your pain.
Your strength, your heartbreak, your helplessness.
You are not alone.
Someone is always keeping score.
