Let's face it, everyone is bullied at some point in their life. A person could be standing in a lunch line at their school cafeteria or could be filing papers in an office at work. No matter what environment a person is in, bullying is everywhere. I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed and have experienced bullying myself. People can be cruel. Kids would cut in line in front of other kids to get the last chocolate pudding cup and sometimes they would knock other kids down.
Kids were tattooed with names and rumors that circled around like sharks attracted to a pool of blood. The cruelest thing someone can say to another person is: "Why don't you just go kill yourself?" Kids and teenagers don't realize the power of words. Many kids and young adults take their lives due to bullying and other harassment. The victim of bullying might have a thought that crosses their mind of: "Why me?" Maybe there were things missing in the bully's life, such as love, a parent or both parents, financial stability, health, or even a single friend. You probably don't know where I'm going with this, but the key to stop bullying is to learn to understand others and their situations.
Look at it this way, two girls in kindergarten are best friends, and one girl gets more attention from her parents than the other girl does. The girl who gets less attention came from a strict and religious household, and she was the middle child of parents who had three daughters. She probably doesn't get as much attention as her older sister and younger sister got from their parents.
Each time she got into trouble, her parents would probably say: "Why can't you be more like your sister?"
The two girls would share in-school snacks and have their mats next to each other during naptime. The girl's best friend is an only child and she sees how much love and attention her best friend gets. Seeing that they live two different lives, the girl who gets less attention starts to bully her former best friend. Why? The only child's mother would pick her up from school and would always ask her child to tell her about the school day and what her child learned. The other girl would always have to wait in after-care and when her mother did pick her up early, her mother would just say: "Let's go", and take her child by the arm. It wasn't the same treatment that the only child's mother gave her daughter.
The other girl was probably jealous and felt like her former best friend's parents loved their child more and she never felt that feeling much due to having siblings, especially a sister who was still a baby, and her parents working constantly.
Middle school is a time where kids and preteens are trying to fit in with different social groups, such as the soccer team, the dance team, band, the drama club, and even the skateboarders. Picture a scenario where a preteen boy is bullied so badly that he has to have a class schedule switch. It's a simple solution, right? No.
The moment when he walks into his new math class, he isn't greeted with the open arms of friends. Two of the boys who bullied him constantly in the hallways are sitting by the door. They both bombard their new classmate with questions on why he switched classes, accusing the boy's mother of being a tattle-tale, and calling him degrading names. The math teacher immediately sends the two boys to the principal's office. It didn't help that the preteen boy's day was already ruined from a horrific morning bus ride, where kids were laughing as they pelted him with crumbled up homework assignments. However, the preteen boy had to have noticed the internal conflicts of his two classmates.
One of those boys came from an underprivileged family, and he was most likely raised by a single mother. The preteen boy never saw or heard anything about his classmate's father, he didn't even come to "Parent Career Day" at school, and he wore the same clothes almost every day. Kids would laugh at him and tease him about not having a father around. He was getting into fights with people who teased him about being fatherless, and later on after middle school, he developed a criminal record. The other boy had an extreme case of attention-deficit disorder. He was teased in fourth grade by other kids because he would do things at random and his way of thinking was considered to be weird. Plus, he would get overexcited about simple things and boys would make fun of him because he sounded like a girl when he squealed. After middle school, he got involved with doing drugs and was expelled for possessing an illegal substance on the high school grounds. Later that middle school day, he was the boy who asked the new classmate why he hadn't killed himself. The preteen boy would run off the bus into his mother's arms, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and he would ask his mother why someone would say that to him.
Being slammed head-first into a locker is a fear for most kids and teenagers. It all depended on if your speed of gathering your notebooks was quick enough. One day, a girl is struggling to find her biology notebook and then... Bam! A girl in a grade above her slams the back of her head against her boy band poster-covered locker. After the girl who has been slammed into a locker gets up off the floor, the girl in a grade above her mocks her stare. "What are you looking at, b****?" The words she shot towards the younger girl like darts caused the younger girl to snap at her and tell the older girl to leave her alone.
The older girl's lip was quivering as she turned away and retreated into the girls' bathroom. The school principal was aware of the situation and called both of them in for separate meetings, and the younger girl listened in to her bully talking to the principal. This is when the younger girl learned that the older girl came from more than one foster home and was abused as a young child. The older girl hardly had any friends due to her home life, and it was difficult jumping around from one family and school to the next. These scenarios made the bullying victims realize that even their bullies, were also victims themselves.
Bullying is a problem that occurs every day in schools, jobs, homes, and even on the Internet. I know that everyone who reads this has been bullied before, but have you ever wondered if your bullies had their own internal conflicts? Think about it for a second. Do you remember seeing that big, tough kid pushing a smaller kid into the lockers back in elementary, middle, or high school? However, did you notice the other details, such as bruises, scars, unclean clothes, or even the bully being bothered by the mention of parents or a lack of something the bully didn't have?
This is why I forgive my former bullies. A few years ago, I would probably curse their names and spit on the ground they walked on. However, I remembered those details that many people overlook. Everyone has their own internal conflicts and a major flaw in the world is the lack of listening and understanding. Bullying can be stopped with kindness, understanding, and acceptance. With understanding, kids and adults will be able to forgive others and put an end to what they have experienced.
