What Babies Would Say to Bullies

Toua wrote our final entry for chapter 11. This is his
nephew and niece, spreading a little Christmas cheer!

In Chapter 11 of Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy, she talks about how bullies are made, the cause of their actions, and the negative effects bullying has on both the victim and the tormentor. While reading this chapter, I thought about my childhood experiences where maybe I was a victim of bullying or even the bully who caused damage to others. I also wondered what causes people to become bullies and why people take such actions. As I continued reading, I learned that the family environment has a big influence on children and aggressive behaviors. If a child is raised in a family environment where violence and the use of force are common, the child will adapt to these bad habits and also become very aggressive. Bullies learn to use their aggressive behaviors to solve conflicts and to satisfy their needs. These reasons are why it is hard to eliminate aggressive behaviors of bullies without the right help and resources.

After learning about how the family environment is a big influence on children, I can clearly see why I was probably once a bully, because I enjoyed the use of force to satisfy my needs when I was a kid. Though my family environment probably caused me to be a bully, it does not mean that I grew up in a bad family environment. Times were tough for my family, especially for my parents who were first generation in America. We learned to do what it took to survive and to adapt to the new ways of America. 

In this chapter, Gordon also talks about how “the stereotypical bully is the bigger kid who physically attacks someone smaller” (p. 170), and how “bullies can isolate or exclude a classmate, making her feel alone in the middle of a busy classroom” (p.171). I can relate to these descriptions. I can still remember my classmates excluding me from group activities or group discussions because of my ethnicity, and humiliating me in front of others by resting their hands on my head because of my physical appearance. Going through these experiences probably played a factor in why I used to behave badly as a child myself, because I believe bullying is contagious.

As I came close to the end of this chapter, I realized that bullying is a serious issue that needs to be stopped because it does affect the development of our children. When relating bullying to Erikson’s psychosocial stages, I can clearly see how bullying will create unfavorable outcomes in all the stages that Erickson listed. I agree with Gordon that it is important to eliminate bullying by teaching our children to become their own police in challenging cruelty, because bullying is unhealthy to both the victim and the tormentor.

After reading this chapter "What Babies Would Say to Bullies," I am inspired to eliminate bullying behaviors. When I work with children in the future I will teach them the importance of helping each other and why aggressive behavior will not solve anything. I will hope that by teaching them good behavior, they can then teach that to my children when they go to school so they won’t have to deal with bullying.