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Showing posts with label #bullying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #bullying. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The Square Peg



The Square Peg
By Jill Jenkins
          Imagine being in high school, the most socially and emotionally charged period in a person’s life, and all of the other students talk to other students around you, but no one talks to you.  You hear about parties, but you are never invited.  In fact, you are similar to the girl in Janis Ian’s classic hit, “At Seventeen:” 



               “To those of us who knew the pain

                Of valentines that never came

                And those whose names were never called

                When choosing sides for basketball

                 It was long ago and far away

                 the world was younger than today

                when dreams were all they gave for free

                  to ugly duckling girls like me...”
 

Teenagers accept only those that fit their perception of the perfect teenage image.  You are the square peg.  You feel loneliness and you wonder if there is something wrong with you because you are different from the others.  Maybe you are different because you have a different religion, a different race, a different skin color, or even a different sexual preference.  Maybe you are different because you aren’t pretty, you aren’t thin, and you can’t afford designer clothing.  Because you are square peg in many schools, you are shunned. Now, you have a good idea of what a child feels when he/she is the victim of bullying.  Isolation is another form of bullying. 

            As a teacher it is sometimes easy to spot the child who verbally abuses other students.  As a teacher, it is sometimes easy to spot the child who physically abuses other students, but as a teacher it is harder to identify students who use the psychological abuse of shunning or isolation to abuse their victims.  Those who abuse others in this way  often  continue to abuse their co-workers by making decisions behind their backs and leaving them out of the loop of communication, ignoring their co-worker and talking behind their co-workers back.  Likewise, these are tactics often used by female students to bully another student. I have seen students who eat every day in the counseling office because they don't want to face the embarrassment of eating alone.  Some schools have made it a policy that no student eat lunch alone, but aren't there still those who are alone even in a forced social situation? Social media and the internet create even a larger arena for these bullies to thrive.   The results of this abuse can be devastating to an insecure teenager.  

            Research actually indicates that students who bully often come from home where they are bullied by a parent and their victims are often students with low self-esteem.  In my own family, my father used to taunt and tease us.  He had belittling names for each of us identifying whatever weakness he perceived.  He believed that this behavior made us more resilient to others.  He wanted to toughen us up. My father’s taunting was imitated by my brothers who called me “Pizza Face” because I had acne, “Thunder Thighs” because my legs were not thin, and often smacked my elbow as I ate pie so they could be amused as pie smashed up my nose.  Belittling children does not make them more resilient.  It destroys their self-image.  A child with a strong self-image does not feel the need to taunt and tease others who are weaker and they rarely become the victims of bullying because their healthy self-image makes them a more difficult target for would be aggressors.  In fact, children who are belittled and bullied by a parent often bully other students at school or bully their own children when they grow up. 

            Stopping the cycle of bullying, means we need to educate both parents and children.  Changing both the parents’ and child’s attitude toward bullying and helping to identify what behavior is harmful to others will help stop this behavior at schools.  Knowledge is power.  Not only knowing what behavior is inappropriate and harmful, but getting to know the square pegs is another way to build bridges.  As long as the other person is some unknown stereotype (oh, those Goth students) they will bully them, but getting to know each child as an individual is one way of stopping bullying.  Group work where students do not just select their own friends, but are placed in groups with students who are different from them helps students gain skills in working with all types of people, but it also helps them recognize the similarities between them and those that they perceive as differ.
            Bullying like child abuse is not an easy problem to stop, but as a teacher you need to create an atmosphere of caring, where students feel like they are all members of a community.  You need to identify all types of bullying: physical, verbal and psychological and never tolerate it in your classroom.  Act to educate students and parents about the effects of even social isolation.  Let’s give the square pegs a chance to fit in.