One of the inevitable side effects of impending parenthood is that you end up reading a lot of magazines aimed at parents. Jen picked one up yesterday at the supermarket and there was an article in it called "The Basics of Bullying".

Leaving aside the rather unfortunate connotation that this would seem to be an article about how to bully, the piece talked about how to cope with your child being bullied and pointed at a few resources for more information.

What seemed to be missing in this piece was anything about dealing with the bullying child. I'm not talking about punishment (although that may be necessary), I mean finding out why a child feels that they need to bully.

Indeed the article started strangely with a story about the author sitting down to dinner with her kids. She told them that she was writing a piece about bullying and asked her children if they knew anyone who had been bullied. Her son said he had been bullied in middle school, and the author asked him why.

That single question speaks of an atttude that there is a reason for bullying, that it can in some sense be justified, that ultimately it is the fault of the victim.

I am not a parent yet, and I do not know that I would be able to understand my child being the bully any more than another parent but still... it's not the fault of the victim. Putting all the emphasis for dealing with bullying on the victim seems profoundly wrong-headed, like saying that it was Kuwait's fault that Saddam's Iraq invaded.

By all means teach higher self-esteem to the victim, but for goodness' sake don't forget that it's the bully that is the aggressor.

Posted by Dunx at January 12, 2005 09:25 AM