Welcome to Mom and Daughter Fighting, Slate's parenting podcast for Tuesday, September 1st, the Before Bullying Begins Edition.

I'm Elizabeth Newkamp. I write the homeschool and family travel blog Dutch Dutch Goose, and I'm the mom to three littles, Henry 8, Oliver 6, and Teddy 3.

And I'm currently located in Navar, Florida.

I'm Jamila Lemieux. I'm a writer, contributor to Slate's care and feeding parenting column,

and mom to Naima, who is 7, and we live in Los Angeles, California.

On today's show, we'll be talking about how to prepare your kids to respond if bullying occurs

and to avoid becoming bullies themselves with the great Emily Bazelon.

But before we get to that, we have triumphs and fails.

Jamila, do you have a triumph or fail for us today?

I have a historical triumph that relates to bullying.

I feel like I might have told the story on the show before, but I feel like I might have

told it on like the regular show a long

time ago. So I'll tell it again because it's a good one. It's my classic bullying story. So when I was in

first grade, there was a third grader by the name of John Pitts. And we wrote the same school bus.

Our school bus was often late for whatever reason. I think maybe the driver had another route

before he picked us up.

And so we'd have to oftentimes wait in the lunchroom for our bus route to be taken home.

It was a big school. It was like 2,000 kids. It was like five homerooms in each grade or whatever.

So it was like a first eighth grade. So it was a pretty big school. I traveled outside of my

neighborhood for school. And so the bus was a big deal. A couple other boys gave me a little bit of trouble, too, but John was the main actor, and somehow, you know, he'd found out that I was afraid of worms. And at first grade, I would, like, Naima makes fun of me for this because she's mean. She's like, I can't believe you're afraid of. like of all the things that you're afraid of. Like, I was afraid of worms, you know? So if it rained, you know, and they'd be on the ground, I'd be freaked out. I'd scream. It was like a thing. And so John knew that was afraid of worms. So this particular day, we were waiting for the bus to come get us. You know, school got out of 1.30, so it's probably like 2 o'clock we're sitting around and John,

he walks up to me

and, for the bus to come get us. You know, school got out of 1.30, so it's probably like 2 o'clock. We're sitting around. And John, he walks up to me, and he puts a worm in my face. And so, you know, he's like wiggling it in front of me. And I realized it's a gummy worm. And so finally, I have the upper hand over John Pitts, finally. So I'm like, this is a gummy worm. I take and I eat it. Just, ha-ha. And so he's like, I found that on the floor. Drette. He's got me again. I sit in the lunchroom stewing with anger. You know, my little six-year-old fist probably all balled up. And I don't, you know, I'm just so tired of this dude. And he was also like the principal's

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