A British study on bullying was released recently and today it was across many of the major internet news sites, as well as on my local radio station. (This article sums up the findings nicely for those of us like me who really never want to read a scientific article again in their life: BBC News: Bullied ‘more prone to self harm’)
The study basically asserts that children who are bullied are more likely than their non-bullied peers to self-harm by the age of twelve and are more likely to have long lasting psychological problems, even into adulthood. When I heard about this on the radio today, my first thoughts were ‘well duh, who needs a study to tell you that?’. To be honest it was frustrating to hear such a conclusion put out there as if it is major breaking news. Of course kids who go through traumatic experiences growing up are more likely to self harm. For the most part (and I am assuming here), I can’t imagine a healthy person who had a very happy childhood is overly likely to cut themselves or pull out their hair, without some other mitigating factor anyhow. I also can’t understand why it is surprising that bullied children are at risk of long term psychological effects. I guess what I am asking is…why is this news?! Why did they even study this? Couldn’t the money used to conduct this study have been better spent helping to promote anti-bullying initiatives?
I’ve told a few people I know that I was bullied through grade-school. I had one person say to me once ‘so what, everyone is bullied at some point and most of us just let it go’. Mind you, this person was angry at me when they said this but regardless, her thoughts couldn’t be clearer: she thought that bullying was a normal part of growing up.
Let me tell you what I went through. I had people try to cut my hair on the bus ride home. I had people put gum in my hair. I got punched in the face and I got tripped in the hallways. I got spit on by spit balls daily. I got called names and as I walked by, people would laugh. I thought everyone hated me and here is the kicker: nobody seemed to notice or care. My parents didn’t know (of if they did, they never mentioned it) and teachers never questioned it or tried to stop it, simply reinforcing the bullying behavior. This went on to the extent that even now, at 25 years old, I worry constantly that my co-workers do not like me and that my husband’s friends think I am weird and that my old university class mates avoid me in public. I live over a 1000km away from where I grew up and went to school but I still feel as if most people I meet know that I was a loser as a kid (at least that is how I felt). I am getting over this and I do not seem to feel this way as often as I used to, but these feelings still surface occasionally, especially when there is tension between me and somebody else. I also pull my hair on a regular basis, to the point where I get small bald spots and then find a new way to do my hair that covers the worst of it (for example, my bangs sweep to the right at the moment to cover the fringe left from a spot I pulled at for months).
Anyway, I guess my point is this: we do not need a study to tell us how bullied children can turn into self-harming adolescents and emotionally and psychologically wounded adults. We need more awareness as to what is bullying and how it can be prevented and we need to put more emphasis on making our schools welcoming and safe. I’ve yet to have kids of my own, but when I do, I hope they can have a much better schooling experience than I had, and for that I don’t believe that bullying should be considered a normal part of growing up.
/rant
hertruecolours 