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By Liz Quirin

Successful Bullies Can Make Behavior a Way of Life

We hear lots about kids being bullied in school, but these are nameless, faceless people — both the bullied and the bullier — except for the ones we see on TV. Unless you have been directly involved in a case of this kind, it’s difficult to imagine it happening to you or your children. First, we wonder, who are these monster youngsters who would do this to another child?

Unfortunately, bullies don’t look like monsters if they’re not bullying someone. They look like any other kids, really, who just take opportunities to exert power of some kind over another child. It used to go almost undetected because it happened at school, on the playground, on a walk home from school or at some event where young people are not closely supervised or “under surveillance” the entire time they’re with other young people.

I spoke with Sr. Barbara Lux about bullies because she is a counsellor and she has had first-hand experience with teens — some of them bullies — who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law and ended up in juvenile correctional facilities. The question that keeps coming at us is: Why do kids bully other kids? The simple and sad answer: because they can. Somehow the powerful see or sense something in one of their peers that broadcasts “victim” to them. Could they help instead of harm this person? Absolutely, but it just doesn’t usually work out that way. It’s truly awful, and it affects some young people for the rest of their lives. Previously, the pool of people witnessing a bully in action was small, just those in the immediate area or a class or a relatively small group of people. Parents were seldom told.

However, with the internet, the potential pool of people witnessing a bully’s behavior is, unfortunately, limitless. Bullies may begin their careers in schools, but it doesn’t always stop when they leave school. For some, bullying becomes a way to feel successful, and they take their “lessons” on into adult life, perhaps bullying their children, their partners or spouses and their employees.

Because we want to protect our children, we institute and enforce rules about conduct and the way we treat people in classrooms, and hopefully, in the lunch room and on the playground. These behavioral rules become life lessons that can make a difference for years to come. By teaching young people how to behave in a somewhat organized or controlled environment like the school, we are not only protecting the children in that moment of their lives, but we can be providing future adults with tools to deal with unwanted and unhealthy situations and behaviors.

Bullies don’t just disappear when they finish school and move into another environment. Just as we take our life lessons with us so do they. Bullying isn’t just a phase of life, something that someone will outgrow. We need to take it seriously in school and in life.