Parents, Teach Your Kids To Respect Other Kids

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I am writing this because I am in dire need to express my disappointment to how some kids bully other kids whom they think are weaker than them. I grew up being bullied from grade school until high school. Some of the mean kids at school would either take my lunch money or would make me run errands for them. I endured all that and it was something that I don’t want my daughter or any kids in my family to experience.

Unfortunately and to my horror, my nephew is now being bullied at school. Just the other day, he cried after we teased him about how he is growing up fast and, for no reason, started crying. After making an apology and asking him what his tantrum was all about, he said that he is also being teased at school. It broke my heart to know that kids still suffer from bullying and even if schools have some anti-bullying campaigns, other children still do it behind the limelight.

It is so unfair because we have raised kids in our family to be nice to other kids and yet  they are the ones who are being bullied. There isn’t anything I can say to him to assure him that he will be safe at school. Even if kids have guardians staying with them at school, they [guardian] really do not know anything that’s going on inside the classroom. Moreover, some kids keep these things secret from their parents for fear of being ostracized and humiliated. For being a boy, my nephew feared that when he complains, he will be teased of being bayot (gay) for doing it.

They say that bullies are formed from a dysfunctional family but didn’t you know that those who are also being bullied have tendencies to form dysfunctional families as well? Parents of bully children also do not want to accept the truth about their children and so they do not really act at all. If you are such a parent, shame on you.

For those parents who have not experienced being bullied when you were younger, consider yourself lucky. You have never experienced how difficult it was to wake up every morning dreading to go to school because you will have to face the same people who will make your school life miserable for the rest of the year. There are countless of times when I prayed throughout the summer until  the first day of school for the bullies to move to another school or be assigned to another section – to my disappointment. So parents, do your children a favor and love them more… teach them how to respect other kids too!