Recent stories of teen suicide caused by being bullied have brought a spotlight to the issue of bullying. There has been talk of special committees to study the issue. There has been talk of expecting schools of doing more to prevent student bullying. There has been a lot of talk. The talk, however, has concentrated almost exclusively on the problem with teenagers. This is a pity because it does not address the entire problem and what may be the actual cause of teen bullying.
Bullies have always been with us. When I was in middle school many years ago, there was a group of three boys who tried to get me into a fight almost every day on my way to school. Not knowing what else to do, I ignored them. I just kept walking to school. After many months (maybe it was only a few days, but it felt like many months), they finally gave up. Some years later, when I was working over the summer as a playground supervisor, there was one boy who thought I should fight him. I couldn’t because to do so would have lost me my job. But slowly, I co-opted him until he used to come around and help at the playground. It turned out he was just bored and needed something to do, or someone to recognize him. And he did it in the only way he knew how.
In later life, in my first civilian job, my boss kept telling me that if I personally did not bring in new business, I would lose my job. The fact that I was an engineer, not a marketing type, made no difference. I and I alone, was responsible for bringing in new business. This too was bullying, a fact exacerbated by the fact that I was suffering through clinical depression at the time . . . and he knew it.
The fact is that bullying is all around us every day in
overt and subtle ways. The only question
is whether, in any given situation, you are the bully or the bullied. Are you the boss who berates a subordinate in
front of others? Or are you the boss who gives in to a loud, insistent
employee? Are you the driver who insists
on cutting in on another driver who has the right of way? Are you the shopper who takes your
frustration out on a store clerk who has absolutely nothing to do with your
problem? Or are you the store clerk who uses your passive-aggressive capability
to deny that same shopper, or the next one, proper service? Or are you the
homeowner who lets in a pushy salesperson who insists that your house has a
problem? Or are you the pushy
salesperson? See if you can recognize
yourself in any of these scenarios.
These are all examples of the bullying that we see every
day. And in most cases we feel helpless
to do anything about it. But if we do,
the results can be tragic. The two
teenagers who carried out the shootings at Columbine High School were not
ideological terrorists. They had been
bullied in that same high school and were now taking their revenge. But that does not mean that, as a society, we
cannot take action to curb the all too familiar bullying theme.
Going back to teen bullying, let’s start at home. As a parent, do you advise your child to take
what’s his, regardless of the consequences?
Do you tell your child to stand up for himself and show him how to
fight? Better still, do you come home
from one of the encounters I described above, and tell your children how you
“told somebody off”, “got in their face”, or “got my way” and showed them how
proud you were of it? Did you ever show
off to your child how you are “the man” by being aggressive toward someone else?
You tell your child that they shouldn’t bully the little kid down the
street and you think that is all that’s needed.
Teenagers don’t pay much attention to what you tell them. But they do take in how you act. They are far more swayed by example that by
words. They want to see and emulate what
you do, particularly those things that seem to enhance you. Did you ever have a kid ask why you were mean
to a store clerk, and your answer was because they deserved it? Can you start to see now the reason for teen
bullying? Can you now start to see why
some people go on to be bullies all their lives? Like bigotry, bullying is an acquired habit,
learned through example from those a child grows up looking up to. Are you the
cause of bullying? Think about it.
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