Some Thoughts on Bullying

When it comes to the topic of bullying, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple years, there is almost no hotter topic out there. Unfortunately the bullying phenomenon is nothing new. We all grew up dealing with it in one way, shape or form.  For me and countless others out there it took a major toll. My personal plight with the attention bullying is receiving is that it’s all for nothing. If we want to talk about bullying we should be talking about at-risk youth. So as opposed to bullying being the cause for all these issues, it’s actually the alarming amount of children who are growing up at-risk these days. The youth today are completely desensitized; they lack compassion, sensitivity, understanding, patience and most importantly they lack resilience. Outside of the usual suspects such as media, government, radio, Internet, teachers, etc. who routinely get the blame for everything. Why don’t we take a good hard look in the mirror and recognize that maybe the issue is a lot closer to home than we care to acknowledge.

I agree that video games are out of control, music and television are ridiculous and the news is more of a soap opera than ever before, but is any of this new? Did all the generations before not deal with the very same issues? The problem according to me is what is going on inside the family home. Let’s be honest, who else is supposed to teach our children how to be compassionate, understanding, patient, kind and loving? Last I checked there is nobody else in this entire Universe that is responsible for teaching our young those things, that falls on us, the parents. Obviously there are many circumstances for why families are extremely strained these days, but if you decide to have children, for whatever reason, who else should pick up the slack? It’s not something you walk away from, it’s not something you throw your arms up in the air and quit over and it’s not something you allow someone else to do for you! Nothing can be more gratifying then to be a parent, but god forbid you look at your children as too much or a burden, what do you think they are going to turn out like?

When we have children who are raising themselves, children who are neglected or children who are being raised by 2 very hard working parents that can’t be around enough because they need to support the family, you are going to have at-risk youth. In other words you have youth who are at-risk of having some major difficulties and struggles as they try to grow without all the necessary tools and without the necessary knowledge to use those tools. I see it everyday with the kids I try to help, the teenagers who are sliding down a slippery slope and the young adults who are so lost you wouldn’t believe it could be possible. If kids are raised without hope and belief I really don’t know why we are so surprised when we hear about the way they behave at school. Are they mimicking what they see at home or do we want to accept that they are getting it from television? My son watches a wide variety of shows and I’m certain some parents would be shocked at what we allow him to watch, but for me the explanation is simple. I am an extremely hands on parent who is consistently assisting my son navigate his way through life. Another aspect of my life that many would frown upon, is that as opposed to being overly concerned with making a handsome living, I work from home running a business so I can be there for my son instead of being able to buy him the best of everything. I don’t miss skating lessons, baseball games or anything that I can’t control because I want him to be strong and I want him to know he always has me in his corner. If children can be raised in a manner such as this, they will have the ability to flourish, as they will feel safe, secure, confident and most importantly loved. I am not a fan of focusing on the negative, so I don’t want to talk about the ridiculously large number of children who are struggling. Instead I choose to be positive and find constructive solutions for turning this around.

We need to focus on the fact that the average child can no longer weather the storm of a bully and that is what is being ignored. We are never going to get every criminal off the streets and we are never going to get rid of bullies no matter how hard we try to come down on them. If we as adults could regularly acknowledge that bullying goes on in our adult lives far more than it ever did when we were young, just in different forms, we would be assisting our youth without doing very much. We have to strengthen our youth that are falling victim to what we have all had to deal with in our lives. We need to focus on helping the victims a hell of a lot more than we need to focus on punishing the bullies. Think about what we are doing, instead of building up a child who needs it, we give them pity and we tear down another, the bully. Even the bully needs our attention and compassion, not our wrath. These kids are crying out for attention, begging to be loved and they are tired of having the people closest to them let them down.

At The Joshua Project we are dedicated to creating as much awareness as possible, while at the same time we run programs geared towards prevention and change. We need to remind these kids at school of what they may be missing out on at home. We as a society need to stop blaming everyone and treating everyone like an enemy. We need to teach our children the meaning of a team. We need to remind our children what it’s like to want to help others and to not be satisfied with feeling like they can’t stand up for themselves. When did we stop caring if a friend was being mistreated, when did it become so easy to turn a blind eye and when did we start accepting that this is just the way things are? If we can all come together and decide that a little kid who is rude, abrasive and a bit out of control does not need a drug to calm him down unless there is a major mental illness, maybe then we will be on our way to a new tomorrow. That young boy just needs some guidance, discipline, support and love and most times you will find that is all it takes.

So lets accept that bullying is a part of growth, it’s kids expressing their individuality and it’s kids behaving like the adults that surround them and maybe if we accept it, we can teach them how to deal with it effectively.