This week, my youngest (6 years old going on 36), declared, a propos of nothing: “There is just one person I don’t like in Year 1,” (and she names a boy in the other class). “Why?” I asked. “He’s a bully. He never has anything nice to say to anyone, and he teases his friends. I keep away from him.”
This statement made me sit up and take notice. In it, she had captured the essence of bullying: the negative impact that one person can have, as well as her response to it (keep well away).
But there was more to it than that. Some years ago, this boy’s father had been a junior lecturer at the university I was at. And he had tried (unsuccessfully) to bully me.
So you can imagine my feelings when a few years later he appeared at my children’s school gate as a fellow parent. However, I didn’t talk to anyone about my experience as I had not seen him since Uni, and I had no idea if his bullying behaviour had carried on over the years.
When my daughter told me that this boy was getting a reputation as a bully, at six years old, I felt very sad. Even though the bullying didn’t concern her directly, she had noticed it and at this age, will come to us with problems. But what about her school mate? He is unable to see his friends’ positive qualities, instead he picks up on their weaknesses and talks about them, teasing them and creating unpleasant feelings all round. That is no way to start a friendship in school. I hope that somehow he gets a helping hand to show him that bullying has a negative effect not just on the victims, but to the perpetrators too.
While I don’t know the ins and outs of this boy’s home life, I do know that his Dad was a bully. The culture of snide comments, competitive parenting and just downright nasty behaviour at home will come out at school. If Dad talks down his colleagues or speaks to his Mum in an unpleasant way, the son will think that this is normal. If Dad denigrates his son or his son’s friends, he will pass that along in the playground.
Furthermore, with our older children, this can spread online – and we look at the challenges of supervising our children on line in this week’s articles, “How to be a plugged-in parent” and “How to supervise your child online“.
Tell me, do you think bullying is learnt behaviour, or caused by something else? Should I have “warned” my daughter against this boy as soon as they were put in Reception together?
