Bullied over a backpack - did this mum do the right thing?

When this school banned a boy from bringing his backpack to school, they had no idea how big this battle would become…

There is a kid in America with a My Little Pony backpack.

It’s a blue backpack with an elaborately decorated winged pony on the front.

All this child wants to do is carry it to school.

But he isn’t allowed, because he is a boy.

Nine-year old Grayson Bruce’s school have banned him from using his favourite backpack because it is a target for bullying.

Grayson says he has been kicked, punched and called names, all because he has been carrying the bag.

The school – Buncombe County School in North Carolina in the US – have told the boy and his family that the My Little Pony backpack is a “trigger for bullying,” WLOS-TV reports that Grayson had been facing verbal and physical attacks from tormentors who called the backpack “girly.”

The school’s decision process was that by banning the backpack they would stop the bullying.

School officials told WLOS-TV they made a decision to “immediately address a situation that had created a disruption in the classroom."

It was simply harm minimisation.

It’s a tough call. The consensus in the US seems to be that banning the backpack isn’t really addressing the issue.

What about banning the bullies?

But truth be told, it is an obvious solution to the dilemma. If Grayson leaves his backpack at home the bullies will back down. You do have to wonder whether it is a practical one though.

The message it sends the bullies and anyone at all who condemns another’s choice is blatantly wrong.

We all know that, don’t we?

Support for Grayson has been so overwhelming that a Facebook page set up to call for his backpack bag ban to be overturned has had over 13,000 likes.

Even a change.org petition has been set up to let him take the backpack back to school.

Not surprisingly the majority of supporters call to let the nine-year old be himself - to allow him to express his personality in any manner he wants.

My six-year-old son has a red and white striped sheep named Baa. At times this sheep is the centre of his universe.

Before he started school, Baa went everywhere with him, packed tightly in his backpack, taken out in times of need. But when he started kindergarten I decided it was time to take Baa away from him. I was worried about the bullying he might endure clutching a stuffed red sheep so I slowly weaned the toy off him.

His first day at “big school” he wanted to take Baa along, but I firmly explained that sheep don’t go to school, they wait at home for their little boys to return.

He reluctantly let go. And Baa now is his night-time companion.

I too was practising harm minimisation.

The US media have gone into hyperdrive over Grayson and his backpack.

I can’t help but feel that with my son, I have done the best thing I could in hoping to prevent bullying. Something all parents are terrified of happening to their child.

And I can’t help but wonder whether all this was simply a school trying to do the best for their pupil – perhaps without the greatest of insight– but probably without any intentional harm.

Do you think it was right of the teachers to ban his backpack? What would you do?