WHY KINDNESS MATTERS

A grieving mother counters bullying.

Peyton James was an amazing boy. He had beautiful red hair, piercing hazel eyes that changed from green to blue, and a quirky sense of humour. He loved animals, road trips, Minecraft, Lego and chocolate ice cream. He was my Angelface – and now he is my angel in heaven.

He was born in 2001, was nine weeks early and weighed only 1.14 kilograms. He spent 35 days in the neonatal intensive care unit before he was allowed to come home. While in the hospital, he spent three weeks on pure oxygen and was fed through a tube. What wasn’t known then was that the oxygen and liquid nutrition was causing a discolouration in the enamel of his permanent teeth – a problem that we wouldn’t see for several years.

In Year 2 the teasing began. “Why don’t you brush your teeth? Why are your teeth so nasty?”

Although his teeth were healthy, they were a mottled yellow colour, kind of like the colour of a popcorn kernel. He was also picked on because of his hair, his glasses and the fact that he was smaller than most of the other boys. He was seen as weak and became a target.

As Peyton got older, he often wondered why people were so mean to him.

He would ask me, “Mum, why can’t people just be nice?”

I never really knew how to answer that question, so I tried to encourage him to be the nice one. I also told him all the things a parent tells a child – that he was special, that he was smart, that he was loved. But as kids grow older, words of a parent begin to pale in comparison to the words of his peers.

In November 2013, Peyton made his first suicidal attempt.

For years, he had been tormented by several boys at his school. Peyton started to say that his father and I would be better off without him and that he didn’t want to be here anymore. At first, we thought he was just overreacting, but when the comments didn’t stop, I knew he was in trouble, so I took him to the local emergency room.

Sadly, ER’s don’t really deal with mental health issues and we were referred to a therapist. He soon began