In many ways, one of the biggest issues that schools in the United States and around the globe have when it comes to socializing among students is bullying. Whether its verbal taunting, internet humiliation, or physical attacks such as stuffing kids into lockers, bullying itself has harmed the lives of thousands of students and their families. Schools have taken several initiatives to combat bullying, including the establishment of several organizations such as Stop Bullying and Stomp out Bullying. While these movements are all important to stop the harmful process of bullying, there is another element that I feel is incredibly important to stop bullying but that some people forget to mention important. Like it or not, one of the biggest reasons that I feel drives kids towards bullying besides self-esteem/control issues, has to do with the experience that children have with their parents and other adults.Children are highly influenced by the actions of adult leaders/celebrities/ and family/friend members in their lives, and that can be cause attributed to the rise of bullying. Since I know what it’s like on both spectrums (I’ve been the bully/victim of bullying at several points), I know that adult influence was something that influenced me when I was being a bully. While this adult influence had nothing to do with my family (they are very against it), there were other adults who actions made me think that after being a victim of bullying, gave me the impression that bullying back was the only means of combating it. While this was obviously misguided and I am not proud of my actions as a bully, I realized that I was a very impressionable child growing up, and that other’s people’s actions influence me more than they should have. Since I don’t consider these feelings of being impressionable to be abnormal, there’s a strong possibility that this is something about adult activity that the mind of children. From that statement here is a brief theory on what I think might be strong cause for childhood bullying.

When it comes to kids being impressionable, keep in mind that this process begins at birth. When the baby is first born, its brain kicks in survival mode immediately. When baby first cries, its mind and body are quickly taking in information about its surroundings and feelings. Considering that a baby’s first time out of the womb is its first experience with real world, there is a large reason why babies need to be constantly coddled and protected. Since the baby’s body does not have any fully developed bone structure or fully developed organs, babies are absolutely helpless for survival on their own physically. This is where the baby’s mind kicks into overdrive however, and the baby begins to process information and details at an extremely high level. The baby observes/interacts with its environment and picks up information about food, water, comfort, communication, and other skills that the baby might need in order to survive in its environment. When the brain establishes more experiences as it gets older and relays information to the body to grow/develop itself, the baby begin to progress out of its infant stages and starts toddlerhood and later childhood. This period of rapid growth in the mind and body continue to occur until the baby is around 25 years old, when its brain along with its body reaches full development. At this point, the body/brain knows everything it needs to know in order to survive, and marginal development occurs after that. Most of this information I just told you was something I learned in biology class during my sophomore year of high school, According to a course that is being offered by Warwick University at Futurelearn.com, there is a study that is being taught about how parent’s minds effect their children. As kids observe their parents and other adults, they began to adopt practices similar to how their parents act or on how they are told to act. Once they are old enough, they will eventually begin to start making those decisions on themselves

Now to get back to how this information connects with bullying, the attitude of parents and other adults who are raising/living around children is highly influential to those children’s behavior. If the actions of the parents dictate low self-esteem, violence, hatred or even laziness, children a majority of the time tend to pick up on that. It’s not at all uncommon for kids to develop certain likes/dislikes of groups, teams, or even foods because of the beliefs they were raised upon. If children see their parents get away with hatful bullying and teasing towards other adults, then they think that it is OK for them to exhibit that type of behavior towards other people as well. The bond between parents and children normally tend to have very strong knit relationships that contain a lot of emotional attachment, and children normally want to make their parents as happy as possible with them. If parents approve of bully-like behavior among their kids, then kids will see it as a way of receiving acceptance/approval from their parents.While kids aren’t going to act the same way that their parents do, the influence that they receive from their parents will have a big factor in their life. It is important that parents teach their kids right from wrong and show them that bullying is bad, but parents also need to show them the importance of fighting bullying by taking action in their own lives. It does not look good on parent to say that smoking is bad if they themselves smoke three packs, and is especially bad if they bully others while saying that bullying is bad. The bottom line is, is that parents need to watch their actions/words around their children and teach them how to succeed without harming other people. While children do need exposure to the real world and understand that while bullying is something that happens from time to time in real life, doesn’t mean that it’s OK to exhibit their behavior. If parents worked together towards making sure their kids treat each other respect, then it will be much easier to teach children that bullying is wrong towards other people.

Besides just the influence of adults, children also are highly influenced by the actions of other adults as well. Whether it’s a celebrity, a family friend, or a local community member, other adults’ actions influence other children. The same point that I was making with parents however, is that kids who watch other adults hostile actions against one another begin to think that the behavior these adults exhibited are okay to act on. If a child see’s their favorite baseball player getting suspended for the season for violating the league’s steroid policy, the impact that outcome will have on the child will not be a positive one. If they watch a political debate and see that the candidate who is their parent’s favorite is attacking protestors and is bullying other candidates verbally, it can also impact the way that children think as well. While adults do need to act absolutely perfect around children(nor should they need to), they still need to communicate/show in some kind of way what the negative consequences of bullying are

In conclusion, the point of this theory is that children are highly influenced by their surroundings, and that children will participate in bullying-like behavior if they see adults they respect do it as well. This means that adults must try to set a good example for all children regardless of whether it’s their child or not, and they need to make sure that their bad actions rub off on the younger generation. While adults normally understand when they do something that involves bullying, children normally don’t have as strong as an ability to make that judgement early on. This is why it’s important that adults take into account how their actions influence children, as their bullying actions can be harmful to the younger generations if they perceive that this kind of action is considered to be okay. Getting rid of bullying shouldn’t be left to just the school boards, it should be a societal issue that is fixed by children and adults alike. While it may seem like a broad idea, all it takes for this idea to work is for one adult to stand in and tell a kid who is bullying another kid that this behavior is wrong. We (you, the reader, and me) understand that children do follow the actions of adults, as adults are the people who raise then and take care of them when they are infants.This is call to all adults to work towards getting rid of bully-style behavior, and to set a positive example for the younger generation. If adults help children understand that bullying has nothing but negative side-effects, there will be a decline in the number of children who engage in bullying each year.

Here is a clip of where violent behavior from adults has a bad influence on children.

Credit goes to Movieclips.com on their Youtube channel.