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 8th 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/
