Rosie Dutton has a very important role to play in the lives of many children. She enters various classes in many schools and teaches students an important lesson that they can’t easily forget. As parents or grandparents, we have the responsibility to teach our children the lesson learned through this story, with the way presented in the next article being one of the most creative and useful I have ever come to know.
Rosie Dutton held two identical apples in her hands, however, before entering the classroom she repeatedly dropped one of the apples on the floor. When Rosie introduced the two apples to her students, it was impossible to see the difference between the two, and they both seemed perfect, red and juicy to everyone present.
After a few seconds, Rosie picked up the apple that she secretly dropped on the floor and told the students how much she did not like this apple, which was disgusting, a terrible color and its stem was too short. Rosie went on to tell the students that since she did not like this apple, they shouldn’t like it either, and then she passed the apple around so that they too could call it names.
Some of the students seemed confused, but there were plenty who had no problem being mean to the apple saying things such as: "I don’t even know why you exist", "You’ve probably got worms inside of you" and so on... Rosie then passed the second apple among the classmates, and this time a trail of good words were addressed to it: "You are a beautiful apple," "Your color is gorgeous," "You smell great," and so on. At the end of the round of compliments, Rosie held the two apples that still looked exactly the same, and she and the students had a productive conversation about the similarities and differences between the two.
Finally, Rosie held a knife in her hand and began carefully slicing the apples into two halves. The second apple, which received compliments and love, was beautiful, fresh and juicy even from the inside. On the other hand, the fallen apple was bruised and wounded and its inner color changed completely.
The children felt terrible in the light of the sights they had seen, and they understood in a moment the message Rosie wanted to teach them; people who are bullied look like everyone else on the outside, but they are scarred and hurting on the inside.
People who suffer from bullying, especially children, feel terrible inside and usually don’t share their feelings with others. As proof, if Rosie did not cut the apple, we would never know how much "sorrow" and "hurt" were caused to it.
However, unlike the apple, we have the possibility of making such things stop happening. We can teach our children that it’s not okay to say mean things to other children and talk about the harmful effects that verbal violence creates. We can go a step further and teach them to stand up for the kid being bullied, and we can even share our own experiences of feeling small or being teased.
