This is my entry for this week's EcoTrain Question of the Week (QOTW)
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog at this hour. Power imbalance is a societal issue that affects all aspects of our daily life and it is also a common problem between students in Primary, secondary and tertiary institutions around the world. The power imbalance among students can result to bullying, that is, intentionally hurting someone either by words of mouth or actions. This is often done more than once to cause emotional break down or distress and even physical injuries to their victim. Well, sit back, relax and enjoy all that I have packaged for your reading pleasure.
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Bullying can affect the victim in two ways, that is, physical or emotional.
Physical bullying has to do with using physical actions to intimidate and exert power over another person who is not as strong as you.
Examples of physical bullying include:
- Pushing
- Hitting
- Fighting
- Destroying another person's property
- Yelling and making offensive gestures
Emotional bullying is an act of intentionally driving someone crazy by teasing, mocking, calling of names etc. The reason for this type of bullying is to hurt the self-esteem of a person and make a person feel worthless among his or her peers.
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Examples of emotional bullying include:
- Teasing
- Making jest of someone in the midst of others
- Laughing at someone in an offensive way
- Telling lies about you to people or implicating you for an offense you didn't commit
- Calling someone funny names
If you are conversant with news from Nigeria, you'd have read or heard about a 12 year old boy who lost his life due to bullying. He sustained serious injuries that affected his waistline, darkened his face which later led to his untimely death. Bullying in the school can cause a serious problem to the students, in the sense that the learning environment will be uncomfortable for them. They atmosphere will be preoccupied by fear and by extension this is going to affect them emotionally and it can affect their overall learning process as well.
The issue of bullying needs to be addressed and curbed in its entirety. However, the school authorities cannot resolve the issue alone, they need the assistance of parents.
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How do parents take action against bullying?
As a parent you must be able to make your child understand what bullying is and the fact that it is not an healthy behavior. You can go the extra mile to let your child know what bullying looks like and the next line of action to take when they are being bullied, ghat is, report to constituted authorities. Afterwards, encourage your child to keep only healthy company and refrain from group of friends that do not promote healthy friendships.
Inculcating healthy friendship lifestyle in your child begins with starting a chat with your them when they return from school daily. Ask questions about who they ate lunch with, spent the break hours with, what they did during the break hours, where they stopped by on their way home and so on. However, all these should be done in a friendly manner so that they will confide in you.
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In addition, teach your children the necessary skills to avoid a potential bullying scenario. These skills may include building their self confidence and outrightly tell a bully to stay off you. A bully would refrain from this act if they know they can't get to your emotions easily. They can also walk away from the environment when they sense that the environment is unconducive. Above all, teach them to report to appropriate authorities when they are being bullied.
These actions needs to be taken to totally eradicate bullying in our society.
All contents are originally written by me, @williams-owb
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Williams Oluseyi is a Linguist by discipline from one Africa's Most Prestigious Citadel of Learning, Obafemi Awolowo University. He developed interest for blogging at very early stage which motivated him to study English Language in College. He is a prolific writer, an inquisitive and judicious reader, to say the least. To get his daily bread, he is currently working in a Logistics company in Nigeria.
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