01/08/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EViD9LAr8/
Message from a Durban North Mother 📝
"A post about kindness, responsibility, and my son Chad.
Recently, Chad visited a local establishment where a number of children were playing. I am deliberately withholding the name of the establishment because this post is not about publicly attacking a business or identifying individual families.
It is about something far more important.
Several children took it upon themselves to tease, ridicule and exclude Chad because he looks different.
What made the situation even more upsetting was that the parents were close enough to see and hear what was happening — and they did absolutely nothing.
Chad’s granny eventually had to step in and tell the children that what they were doing was wrong. Their response was to laugh at her, move to another area and continue mocking Chad from a distance.
And still, no parent intervened.
Why?
Were they embarrassed to correct their children in public?
Were they afraid of upsetting them?
Did they simply not care?
Or, even more disturbingly, did they see nothing wrong with the behaviour?
People often excuse these situations by saying that children are naturally curious or that children do not know any better.
Perhaps they do not.
But that is exactly why they have parents.
Children are not born knowing how to respond to someone who looks different, walks differently, communicates differently or lives with a disability. They learn how to behave by watching the adults around them.
Curiosity can be answered with kindness.
Questions can be answered with understanding.
Cruelty, however, must be corrected.
When a parent watches their child ridicule another human being and chooses to remain silent, that silence becomes a lesson. It teaches the child that humiliation is acceptable, exclusion has no consequences and another person’s pain does not matter.
You are not protecting your child by refusing to correct them.
You are failing to prepare them to become a decent adult.
Chad often appears to shrug these situations off and simply continues playing. Perhaps he does not fully understand why children behave this way. Perhaps he has developed his own quiet strength. But as his family, we see it. We feel it. And it hurts more deeply than most people will ever understand.
It hurts knowing that our beautiful boy can walk into a playground wanting nothing more than to play, only to be judged before anyone has taken the time to know him.
It hurts knowing that this is not the first time.
And it is frightening to wonder whether it will be the last.
This is 2026. We live in a world filled with information, documentaries, awareness campaigns and stories about people living with visible differences, special needs and disabilities. There is no shortage of opportunities to educate ourselves and our children.
Yet somehow, when faced with a real child standing directly in front of us, some people still choose ignorance.
Chad is not a lesson, a spectacle or something to laugh at.
He is a child.
He has feelings.
He wants friendship.
He wants to play.
He deserves the same dignity, patience, kindness and respect that every other child deserves.
I sincerely hope that the parents involved later spoke to their children privately. I hope they explained why their behaviour was wrong. I hope they taught them that looking different does not make someone less human or less worthy of inclusion.
Sadly, based on what happened, I am not particularly hopeful.
This post is not written for sympathy.
It is written for awareness.
Please speak to your children.
Teach them that it is okay to notice differences, but it is never okay to humiliate someone because of them.
Teach them to ask respectful questions instead of pointing and laughing.
Teach them to include rather than exclude.
Teach them to defend the child standing alone instead of joining the crowd.
Most importantly, lead by example.
Because one day, your child may be the one who is different.
Your child may be the one standing alone.
Your child may be the one desperately hoping that somebody else’s parent raised their child to be kind.
When will things change?
They will change when parents stop looking away.
They will change when adults take responsibility.
They will change when kindness is not merely something we post about, but something we actively teach.
Chad deserves better.
Every child does.
Brad & Tracey Classens "
