Bullying Nobody Talks About: Overbearing Parents
Nowadays, the reality of school-based abuse or bullying is evermore visible, thanks to brave voices, eyes that refuse to adopt a passive attitude and victims of this great social problem. Thankfully, they are finally comprehending that people who suffer from this issue don’t have to feel ashamed or stigmatized. Sometimes overbearing parents can be part of the problem.
It’s difficult to fight against bullying in a socio-economic structure which encourages dysfunctional and harmful values. Values that tend to be the perfect alibi for the party who inflicts the abuse. You only need to look over the section in the newspaper for sports, entertainment, or television programs. There you’ll understand why the problem has become so widespread. But there’s a single sign of relief, and it’s very powerful: we’re finally talking about it.
The “involved parties”: the entirety reflected by our society
The bully is justified by certain virtues that resemble success and charisma. The bullied individual is stigmatized and isolated due to their quirks. In addition, they’re bullied simply because they serve as the scapegoat who exempts the others from receiving aggression.
The spectating party, the most crowded rows, refuse to get involved in a conflict they don’t view as their own. Society inculcates that this is “not profitable”, “pragmatic” and even counterproductive.
If we want bullying to be detected and treated, we can’t stay on the surface. We can’t remain spectators or receptors of complaints of this type of abuse (or any other). Yet, abuse and harassment go much further than blows or mockery.
Sometimes, the bully is a loyal reflection of what is encouraged in our media: the rejection of excellence, the annulment of diversity. The exclusion of originality. A vulnerable target is picked, one without privileges. Furthermore, they aren’t only the target of rage. They’re the evident consequence of everyone’s fault of detecting it in time.
Consumerism and the false concept of success as the origin of modern bullying
Bullying, just as we understand it now, has been a very taboo subject for many years. Now, it’s the adhesion to the new age of psychology and the pedagogy influenced by savage competitiveness. We ignore everything that bothers us, all of the schools’ resources are marketed, and nobody cares if a certain group of kids doesn’t adapt.
We can see how children are taught various languages not due to cultural richness, but due to the material wealth they will obtain some day. Evermore, we delve less into subjects such as philosophy. Children are taught and trained to win, when they don’t even know how to coexist.
Overbearing parents: modern-day bullying nobody talks about
We have to be capable of detecting which common points will always exist in bullying. Some of these can be camouflaged among new behaviors. This includes parents, professors and alumni. In current times, over-protection in hand with the absolute delegation by schools of an education which relies on the parents is provoking serious discipline problems within classrooms.
There is a confusion between the roles and desires on many parents nowadays. On one hand, they wish for their child to spend more time practicing activities outside of the home. On the other hand, without getting involved, they try to have absolute authority over every other professional who works with their kids.
The issue with modern-day education is that there hasn’t been a progressive and optimal transition. The ancient, obsolete and authoritarian educational models and cooperative, democratic models, which don’t strip educational professionals of their authority.
The distortion of our school values
There is a certain distortion of the school development of many children nowadays. This provokes a great difficulty in detecting bullying cases. More and more activities are being performed within the school walls and time. Celebrations and birthdays which should be a celebration to all. Yet, sometimes, some kids start to be excluded due to the decisions of another student’s parents.
Feuds between adults are projected within this common space. Other parents are spectators, but they refuse to take sides. The teachers don’t have collaborators or reliable facts in order to change the dynamic of the situation. The children see how behaviors of exclusion are reinforced. The bullying of children within the classrooms is encouraged by the parents with their attitudes.
Many adults start to behave like “children”. They systematically question teachers and deny any mistaken behavior in their own children. However, these parents stigmatize the behavior of other children, amplify and fan any feud between the two kids before opting for dialogue. This is also a silent type of bullying, actually, one which no one speaks about.
Let’s not let bullying adopt new forms
Now, let’s detect in advance this new type of bullying, which doesn’t cause any less harm due to its silenced nature. We must not turn our children into the broken dolls of our frustrations. We mus not impose labels upon them which can make other adults treat them with a “Pigmalion effect”.
Let’s allow them to make mistakes and achieve successes. Don’t believe we, as parents, have the right to establish a sentence over their behavior and personality. This will only condition the way others will treat them. We should not ever become spectators. Above all, let’s not encourage our model of bullying attitudes onto children.
