How can parents prevent bullying and violent behaviour?

When I asked a shopkeeper ‘Why do you sell cigarettes so close to the school? ‘ he replied casually, ‘I’m doing it because I see others doing it.’ This is something we have heard quite often. He went on to say- ‘If  I’m not selling cigarettes to children, someone else will do. So it doesn’t make a difference really.’ Really?

Child Hiding (Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography)

Then I asked him another question, ‘What if some other shopkeeper is selling cigarettes to your school-going children? Would that be OK too?’ Now he was caught and tried to hide it with a sheepish smile!

 The problem here goes far beyond a clash of business and ethics. It comes from an utter lack of feeling for the community. We fail to see that someone else’s child is just like ours. Such a myopic, self-centered way of life is having a terrible impact on children not just poor but even the rich.

In many countries, it is natural for a child to be educated in a good school while a poor child works as a servant in their house. The ‘privileged children’ quickly learn from their parents how to behave with the servant. Initially, it is possible that they will ask their parents why the servant child doesn’t go to school. If the parent’s response is to dismiss the child’s queries and to tell them to stay away from such issues, the child begins to shape his/her worldview accordingly. They begin to associate less and less with the servant kid and even mistreat them in the parent’s absence. Instead, if the child is taught to the treat the servant child with respect and disciplined whenever the latter is made fun of, the privileged child learns to see things differently. See my post on how to deal with rude and angry behaviour.

Parents are also the best gauge of their children’s emotions.  If children are not discouraged from wrongful behaviour under the assumption that ‘my child can do no wrong’ the parent should also be prepared for their child growing up to be a potential threat to the society. ‘My child can do no wrong’ is too simplistic an assumption (read my post on Sibling Rivalry).

As I have mentioned earlier, children are influenced in several ways and are vulnerable to manipulation. Although children know how to use the internet, they may be ill-equipped to deal with a cyber bully or a paedophile not to mention violent video games.

Children do not understand that smoking a cigarette is addictive, dangerous to health and cannot be easily got rid off. They do it because it is fun and cool. If the parent is also a smoker, an alcoholic or a drug addict and openly indulges in front of their children and then tries to ‘educate’ the child about the consequences of addiction, can they honesly expect the child to heed the advice? The child expects a role model out of their parents. If they fall short, the child is better off at a boarding school or under foster care!

They are our future!

Of course the school also has a role to play. They have a duty to supervise how children behave within the school premises. If there are less number of students in a class and at least one dedicated teacher to supervise a batch of students say for about four to five years, a lot of problems can be avoided. Such a teacher is able to establish a personal relationship with the students and the teacher can also easily identify changes in the child’s behaviour and remedy them proactively.

  Psychological counselling is very important for the students and there should be no stigma attached to it. Counselling will be rendered useless if they are over-burdened as it is a very time intensive activity and can involve complex situations. Schools need to make special provisions if the counselling demands are higher than usual. I have written about the how much the school principal alone can do if he really wants to set things right!

It is not easy to bring up children as responsible citizens, especially  so if we fail to play our role properly. The alternative though is pretty sobering indeed. We do not want school kids to stab their teachers or shoot down fellow students with a gun. Now, do we?

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