Okay so this morning Kai was so stressed about going to school it made him sick. He was so pale and distressed, he had chest pains. He had spent a sleepless night trying to decide whether or not to go to the birthday party he’d been invited to…….should he risk being hurt by the bully who threatened to target him if he went or  should he just roll over and not go?

His fear manifested in an ear-ache, the sniffles and he seriously looked sick. I let him stay home. Having heard NOTHING from the school, and only a day away from the party, I couldn’t guarantee his safety anyway, so why try?

How can I assure my son he is safe when clearly he is not?

He spent the day doing school work and not surprisingly, as the day went by, he felt better so at 3 pm. I let him ride to school to greet his friends in the hope of an after school bike ride.

It was less than 30 minutes later when Kai walked back in the door in tears. The bully had been first out of the school WITH the birthday boy and they collectively announced that Kai was no longer welcome and that the entire group had voted and decided Kai was never allowed to hang out with them ever again and he had to leave immediately or else…..…

Good Luck to the Westlake Community in their court case to abolish the ridiculous and outdated concept of tenured teachers. It is simply unacceptable that high achieving teachers with fresh credentials, up to the minute training methods and a passion to educate are losing jobs to tenured teachers who are failing their students, not bothering to update their credentials, who have lost their love of the game, and are just biding their time in a job they know they can’t lose, simply waiting their days out.

Teachers MUST be judged on how they are performing and I don’t mean result based only because that doesn’t account for students with learning difficulties. Students must be interviewed and listened to and be part of the process in judging a teacher’s performance. The school my son attends has teachers who have been there 30 years and I have heard horrifying stories of these teachers screaming and abusing kids on a daily basis to the point where parents have discussed sending hidden cameras into the room to catch them out. Beverly Hills has some of the worst achievement results in mathematics across the district and with most of the maths teachers tenured it begs the question, who benefits the most out of this system?…

God , I promised I wouldn’t weigh in on this debate but I just can’t help myself. Time magazine – shame on you. Here’s what I consider: NOT whether or not any woman is mom enough due to the longevity of her breastfeeding, but that poor child being directed to stand like that and look at the camera that way, with numerous ADULTS watching on.  This was probably not just a quick one shot of the moment in action…let’s be blunt, she is not lactating from the other breast so you can reasonably assume this child is not actually feeding in this situation. This shoot would have taken a good amount of time, with plenty of people on hand making sure they got the “money shot”, the child told to stand on the chair, latch on, look this way, at an age that would guarantee he did not understand WHY he was doing that, which is when this child’s right to feed turned into something nastier – him being used INAPPROPRIATELY.

We impound artworks and call artists perverts and pedophiles when using children in provocative poses that ignite debate, and YET this photographer and TEAM from TIME have done exactly the same…..they have used a child in a semi sexual pose, taking the private and real intimacy of a child getting nutrition from their mother and turning it into a perverted peep show that this child will have to live with PUBLICLY for the rest of their life.…

I fear the biggest problem with bullying is that it just won’t ever stop. Everyone says to speak out, but the PROBLEM with that is that it just gives the bully and his minions even more “reason” to bully or, worse, subject that bullied kid to the horrible of fate of being left out. And before you suggest they just get new friends, it’s really not that easy, least of all for a kid on the spectrum.

My son has been bullied his whole school life. Life in Beverly Hills no different than anywhere else we have lived other than, sometimes I don’t understand how kids with such abundant wealth can derive so much joy from being mean. I guess the old adage that money can’t buy happiness rings true again. I know that despite my bank balance being smaller than most of these people’s nannies, I have a far closer relationship with my kid…so whose the winner? Me, for sure.

In the last week my son has been ditched by his “friends”, picked on by the ringleader to the point where he voluntarily left his friend’s pool party and came home to be alone, had his lunch stolen, had his school books hidden and I’ve just spent the last two hours trying to get rid of the penis’s some little punk decided to draw on my son’s favorite pants before throwing them into a store room during PE.…

Tania Zaetta has come out with claims she was bullied on Celebrity Apprentice. I have not seen the show, so my comments are limited to my opinion on the situation she refers to and that of filming “reality” TV, of which I have had considerable experience on both sides of the fence – as a host of The Biggest Loser AND as a contestant on Excess Baggage.

This first came to my attention when I stumbled upon Charlotte Dawson’s tweets about the situation. I got interested as I am a staunch advocate of anti bullying and will rally to anyone’s defense in the hope of stamping it out forever. I wish!

I guess first of all I should declare that I have met Charlotte a few times (as part of The Logies 50^th anniversary special and at charity functions etc) and I found her to be positive, friendly, energetic, enthusiastic, very real, a say it how it is woman and someone who had her sisters’ back and who celebrated not being a stick thin insect in a world that covets that. I liked her.

I met Tania once, many many years ago when I was doing breakfast radio for Austereo at SAFM and there was some Ladies luncheon for a local charity and Tania attended as a celebrity during her time as co host on Who Dares Wins.…