What would you do?
Some time ago there was a report in the news of a father who discovered that his daughter had been bullying other children on the school bus. However, his efforts to correct this were highly criticized by many people who called his actions cruelty to his child.
His child had been caught bullying twice. I am assuming that the first time he did all he could to correct his child’s behaviour, explained how it feels to be bullied, how it affects another child’s self-esteem and so on. He also possibly explained that if this happened again there would be a consequence because for every action there has to be a consequence, good or bad.
However, his child was caught bullying on the school bus again.
What was he to do to stop his child bullying?
He chose to withdraw the privilege of using the school bus as she could not be trusted.
What were the alternatives to the school bus? Take his child to school in the car? But surely that would have been a victory for the child with no lesson learned and no consequence that would teach his child that bullying will not be allowed to go unchecked.
What he did was withdraw the privilege of going on the school bus and made his child walk to school. The problem was that it was five miles to school and it was mid-winter and much of the trip was through the countryside. If he was to do this he had to make sure his child was, safe, warm and had backup. That is exactly what he did - the child walked and he followed in the car.
The child made it ok, and when interviewed later, (because this had gone worldwide) was fine and expressed that she had learned her lesson.
The father was taking responsibility for correcting his child’s anti-social behaviour. He presumably wanted his child to grow up respecting other people and understanding the law of consequences. He had to take action, and bear in mind this was not the first occurrence. If he had let it go no lessons would have been learned. If the child had got away with it then what was to stop it from happening again?
Smart dad.
Now I am sure many of you might not agree with his actions, but how would you effectively deal with this situation, bearing in mind that you are training your child for adult life and an aspect of that is to respect other people and treat them considerately.
Bullying is a big problem today and the actions to combat it seem very weak, and even on occasions seem to favour the bully rather than the bullied. It is time to take action that will spell out that bullying will not be tolerated. Having said that, we also need to work at finding out what causes somebody to bully someone else and try to help resolve their issues, enabling them to stop bullying others.
What would you have done?
One thing you could do is read my book ‘Sixteen years a child, Sixty Years an Adult’
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