Aubrey Fontenot is the father of an eight-year-old son, named Jordan. They live in Houston, Texas and he was distraught when he found out that his son was getting bullied at school. At first, he was angry but then he thought about things for a moment.
He realized that he should step back and take a closer look at the situation. Rather than just reacting to the bullying, he wanted to find out why it was taking place. The bully, whose name is Tamarion, was acting out against his son and he knew there needed to be a reason behind it.
The first thing that he did was to reach out to Tamarion’s parents and ask if he could take the youngster for a drive in the afternoon. They drove around Houston and Aubrey tried to befriend him and at the same time, to discover why he was bullying his son. He was both surprised and a little sad to learn why it was the case.
Tamarion said that he was lashing out against children at school, including Jordan, because he was being bullied as well. Kids were picking on him because he had old clothes and was usually dirty. When Aubrey called his mother, she said that they were struggling financially and were homeless.
They spent the afternoon together and he took Tamarion shopping to get new clothes and shoes. He even wanted him to show some self-confidence, telling him at one point: “Put your shoulders back, dog. Act like you’ve got some pride.”
When they got back in the car, they were singing along to the radio and he even saw him smiling from the passenger seat.
When they got back to Aubrey’s home, the two boys sat down and were encouraged to settle things between each other. It was awkward at first but eventually, they had a nice conversation and ended up laughing together. They are now friends that meet at Aubrey’s tattoo parlor regularly to play video games.
Aubrey was not yet finished helping out the family. He started a GoFundMe account and raised close to $25,000 to help them get back on their feet.
“We have no clue what these children are going through these days because a lot of us just don’t care,” Aubrey wrote on the GoFundMe. “And this is not an uncommon story for a lot of people … so I spent a lot of my day yesterday shopping and teaching this young man about self-respect. Integrity. Morals. Confidence. And other things that consist of going from a troubled youth to a great man.”
This should be a lesson to all of us. Anger is never an emotion that helps us get further in life. We need to stay calm and to approach things with a goal in mind and with a calm heart. Another thing that we can learn is that there is often more to the story than what meets the eye.
spent some time with my sons school bully yesterday .. just to dig a little deeper on”why?” .. come to find out he was being bullied for not having clean clothes n clean shoes.. I asked “why?” .. just to find out that his family is currently homeless????????♥️????✊????I had to do Something pic.twitter.com/IY29lgChqY
— TattooArtistAubrey (@illuminaubrey_) October 17, 2018
