Editor’s note: Sarah Moore is a featured blogger on CuddleBugs. She’ll be posting a two-part series this week on TweenBeat.

For those of you who don’t know me, I used to teach at an alternative school in the area, so I have a lot of experience with negative childhood behaviors, including bullying.

Usually the students would act out for reasons such as anger issues, various problems stemming from childhood, abuse, neglect, you name it.  We were trained in how to react and respond to these children and help them deal with what was going on with them.  Different methods seemed to help each child, and eventually I learned many ways to do so.  So why can’t I use this experience and training in my own household?

I never in a million years thought that I would see some of this disrespectful and downright hateful behavior from my own stepdaughter.  Marissa is a very intelligent, creative, and thoughtful person.  She has not been abused, neglected, or anything like that, so where did this all come from?

Apparently she was part of a group of kids that wrote a particularly nasty note to another child, telling him that they no longer wanted to be his friend.  Marissa was the author of said note, and even though she wrote it down it while someone else dictated it, in my book she is just as guilty as the rest of the group.

Marissa tried to defend her actions by telling us that the child was being mean to her and her friends and telling them they were stupid and to shut up, but we did not entertain that at all.  It is NEVER OK to hurt someones feelings, regardless of why, and I thought she knew this.

You may be reading this thinking, kids will be kids, but I am not finished yet.  In the letter there was some name-calling and some choice words, such as “gay.”  So guess what?  This “innocent” note just turned into a hate crime.

When I read this my heart broke, seeing what Marissa had done.  As Christians my husband and I believe that homosexuality is wrong, but our way of dealing with this is to love others even if we disagree with their lifestyles!  Never is it condoned to bully others and call them names, whether they are different than us or not.

To be continued…More on Thursday.

Have any of your kids either been the victim of bullying or the bully?  How did you handle this?

Would this adorable face lie?

Sarah Moore is a resident blogger on CuddleBugs. This is her first guest post on TweenBeat.

I wanted to share a recent misadventure with my stepdaughter…

Marissa is 10.5 and very intelligent, but lately has been using her powers for less good and more “evil.”

We allow Marissa computer access at home for school work and email, which we monitor.  She has been very responsible in terms of the internet and is aware of the basic safety precautions such as never give out personal info.

I think this is why it threw us for a loop when I found out my innocent little fifth-grader had opened a Facebook account during a recent weekend at her mom’s.  She had asked if she could have one last month and we pointed out that not only could it be inappropriate but even downright dangerous for a child, and also it is Facebook’s policy that no one under the age of 13 have an account.

Being somewhat handy on the computer and quite sneaky when I need to be, I started doing a little digging once I realized what she had done.  How disappointing when upon further investigation I discovered that Marissa had lied about her name and age to obtain said account.

We were awarded custody of Marissa several years ago and have been working hard to raise her to be an honest Christian woman with good morals, so as you can guess her father and I were/are pretty upset about this.

So on one hand, this is not the end of the world, just a Facebook account, right?  Maybe, but on the other hand this was about more than that.  It was about lying to us and lying to others to get something she knew she should not have and had been told she could not have by her parents.  It was also about the safety of a child.  Who knows what kind of people could contact her on Facebook!  Maybe I have read too many stories in the paper about pedophiles and other predators, but I would always rather be safe than sorry.

Needless to say, we had a nice looong lecture about why she is too young to have a Facebook account and of course the lying, followed by 2 weeks of grounding and no computer privileges for a while.

I just don’t get it though, she is only 10.5!  I expected the occasional attitude and minor drama with girlfriends, but not this, not yet.  I don’t remember starting to push my boundaries and break the rules until I was a teenager!  Then again, that was quite a while ago (:

Anyone have any experience with this kind of thing?  Any tips?