Tackle the bullied in you: an example set by a nine year old

http://www.cybervictims.org

  As a young student I was also subjected to bullying by my schoolmates. Unfortunately twenty –twenty five years back in India the word “bullying” was pretty unfamiliar with the students, parents, teachers and also behavioural scientists. When I joined this school in Kolkata in the late parts of 1980’s as an 8^th standard student, at first, my new classmates could not happily accommodate me in their groups. They took time. In between I regularly got to hear teasing and humiliating words targeting my body structure, my previous location and even my family back ground. Teachers were of no help either as they were busy bringing out the best of the lot for the forthcoming public exams. My only comfort cushions were my parents and my sister. We felt that these were extremely humiliating and teasing words; but never knew that this particular behavior is known as bullying and it is that particular girl/s who loved hurling those remarks, who needed more attention from the teachers and counsellors than me, because she/they probably had terrible personality disorders.  My mother probably understood this and she constantly petted me, comforted me telling me that I need to be strong enough to deal with such people not only in the school, but in future also. I grew up being a person strongly advocating positive thinking. I finally understood what my former classmates were actually going through when I got this golden opportunity to work in the project on cyber bullying. Huge amount of literature made me aware of various patterns of school bullying; added with this, my mentor Jayne Hitchcock, President, Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHOA), gifted me a unique training on how to withstand cyber bullying. No wonder, physical bullying and cyber bullying are different in nature and the effects of both may not be the same. But the core effect of bullying, either in case of physical bullying, or in case of cyber bullying remains the same; it hurts, it destroys the self confidence of the victim and it successfully wastes huge lot of study and activity times for the young victims.

            No sooner, I saw a growing little princess in my own home, my daughter, who I felt would be more vulnerable to bullying as she comes from a mixed cultural background and has a very uncommon name for the school. Some of her early behavioural symptoms regarding her day to day interactions with her classmates made me aware that bullying is back in this generation with the same old flavour. I started experimenting with her the tricks that my mother taught me and that were further nurtured by Jayne. I made her understand that whatever some people say her, she will always remain my darling princess, I will encourage her for better performances on each of her failures and I would love to see her as whatever she aims to be. Well, a pinch of sour; I warned her that I will not be her well-wisher if she crosses her lines for bad and   she has to learn from her own mistakes then, which might be extremely painful. Over the times, she accepted me as her best friend. She shares her own thoughts with me and she teaches me as how to laugh away worries and win over the situation.

And then came the biggest surprise for me as a mom . she came back from the school last week and showed me her note ; someone has left a message for her in her note  telling “You’re Loose”... the particular ‘adjective’ is a very common one in this place to describe one as a fool, idiot and stupid. No sooner I understood that some one has become a bully and found a (wrong) target in my daughter. I looked at my daughter and asked “are you hurt?” she twisted her lips in an attempt to smile and answered “well, not really. But I want to know who is this ‘friend’?”. I told her ‘what is the use in finding that out? Better ignore and enjoy life.’ She answered “I want to show him/her something”. I was literally taken aback when she returned from her desk after a few minutes; she had written this message as you can see above in the picture to the bully. she wrote " yes, loose persons win"  and she carefully closed the message by adding her own 'signature' "from Rai".

She started giggling heavily.......... the sweetest thing every parent would love to hear from his/her child; she told me she can see a baby with a back pack, a ripe fat tomato, a drum stick and  two unequal shaped potatoes... her favourite vegetables. I felt a peculiar joy.. She successfully tackled the ‘bullied’ in her. She refused to let herself be bogged down by the message. She gave me the greatest message “the writer would feel good if I feel bad....... I am feeling happy to get so many amusing things in the note.... thank you who ever you are”.

Didn’t she just reveal a CORE feeling? Don’t let yourself feel bullied. The more you FEEL the more you are HURT.

Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2012), “Tackle the bullied in you: an example set by a nine year old”, 12th  August,2012, published in http://cybervictims.blogspot.com/