I look back once in a while and replay what happened in my life to remember the life lessons there. Or if I have time, like now, I reread what I wrote in m previous blog, and there was a topic I once wrote about, which kinda rocked me again to the core.
Bullying.
Experiencing the thing first hand for the majority of my childhood, I can say that it was not a pretty place to be in. I’ll post for you guys what I wrote in my other blog first, but now, I’ll be looking at it from a different perspective- That of being the parent, and looking out for the signs if your child is bullied or not, or if your child is the bully and what to do.
Excerpt from axons and dendrites(my old blog)
Before, when I was in the first grade, I was already labeled as one of those weird and “unspeakables” by my popular classmates, and well, at first it was no big deal for me. All I know those times is that I am weird therefore I am cool, unusual and different. Unfortunately, being labeled as such made other people judge my personality as someone who is irritable and I was feeling like everybody, even the teachers think I am this “she-who-must-not-be-befriended” because of this label. Come fourth to fifth grade, I got tired of this labeled me and I wanted to show everyone that I am a person, someone who can also get hurt and is hurting everytime I am teased.
The optimism really fades when you’re growing up, and every single school day you face the same damn faces who have been tearing you down for around 5 years and counting. They say stuff about me like being too talkative, too silent, too much of a teacher’s pet, although I never have received a really high grade. Hey, they are the ones who are in top in academics after all, it’s just that I liked to study back then and there was too much curiosity in my mind that’s why I talked to teachers often. They also say that I’m a social climber, although all I wanted was to be friends with them, and they’re the ones who shunned me out.
This continued on until high school, and this is because my parents did not me to enroll to another school because it was either that or a public school… Now, when most people say that high school is the best, for me it’s just mehhh… nothing special, in fact it’s one of those eras of my life that I wanted to forget, along with the rest of my grade school life. Looking back, I see that I had made only 4 real friends, and in high school the only friends I ever made was the ones who are nice enough to see me beyond the label, and unfortunately, when they befriended me, the whole batch suddenly did not talk or befriend them as much. To what I heard, they even went to the extent of saying that if they will continue to be friends with me, they’re not gonna be talking to them anytime soon.
That was the bullying that I underwent during my earlier years.
So, What had happened to stop the bullying? Nothing. Because even if I tried to talk to my parents, they would dismiss it cause they are friends with the other parents and they see their child as someone who would not do it. It really made me sad, and I swore that if and when I have kids, I’ll try my best to help them if ever they are bullied. Or if ever they tend to become the bully.
So, how to do it? The same way we cross the rail road- we STOP, LOOK and LISTEN.
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