October 7, 2012

Advice for a little girl with different arms

Hi, 

My name is emily. I am 17 years old. I have a six year old sister named brianna who has an arm that is shorter then the other,had two fingers and she is missing her radius. Since she is six she just started first grade. She is having problems at school with bullies. They make fun of her and they point. She gets so upset when it happens and she doesn't know what to do. I was just watching Miami Ink and saw you. I was hoping you could give me some advice so i can help her deal with bullies. I hate seeing her come home upset and saying "Emmy,so and so made fun of me today" It breaks my heart. Please i could really use some of your help so i can help her.  The following picture is of Brianna.

Emily



Hi, Emily!

What an adorable sister you have!!
 
That's a tough one. People can be really mean. Instincts tell us to fight back, but fighting fire with fire just leaves everyone burned. The best thing I can ask you to tell her is that she needs to look at is as though God made her special for a reason. It may be hard to figure out what that reason is, but it doesn't matter. The key is she needs to be happy about herself because she is special.  She needs to know this deep in her heart.  Tell her that every single day and make sure she tells herself that as well.  Once she believes she is special, people will start noticing it and she will attract nice people into her life.

There isn't anything we can do about the mean people except not letting them make us feel bad about ourselves. I found it easier to deal with them if I just thought to myself that the reason they're doing that to me is because they're jealous that I'm special. They wish they had arms like mine!

I really hope this helps!
 
Is it OK if I publish our exchange on my website? 

Maybe one of my site visitors will have better advice for you. 

Please let me know if that's OK.

Best of luck to you!

Todd Swank


1 comment:

  1. Great advice to Brianna! I might add that maybe she could walk up to the people making fun of her and say hi, my name is Brianna, would you like to see my arm? But that would take a lot of guts for a 6 year old. But it might get some dialog going. If not, it might freak them out and they'll stop!


    And if it's kids in her class, maybe her parents can have the teacher and Brianna explain to the class that she was born that way and maybe show how she does stuff with her short arm. People are afraid and lash out at things they don't understand. If it's explained to them, they may lose interest and/or maybe even think it's cool. A good teacher would use it as a good opportunity to teach kids about differences and why they don't matter.


    But, what do I know. The bullies I had in school, I clocked them and they went away. Or I said FU and went on my way.

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