On the 62nd birthday of Malaysia, can we commit to do everything possible to make every educational institution a bully-free zone?
Everyone, together, can stop a bully. In school, teachers can end this epidemic. Identify the bully. Find out what is going on behind the bully’s aggression and meanness.
Are there adverse childhood experiences like family instability, neglect, or abuse? Talk to other students, teachers, and parents. Counsel children and parents.
Refer confirmed bullies for neuro-developmental, psychological, or psychiatric assessments.
I am not for catching bullies to expel or imprison them, unless they have been proven psychopathic or dangerous. We must intervene early to help them heal their inner pain and loss of self-control. The bullied need help too.
Bullies usually have self-image issues, some with unresolved rage. They get people to be afraid of them. They feel very cool with the notoriety and get self-gratification when they smell fear. They become addicts to this sense of power and self-importance and will repeat when the next prey is cornered.
Bullies are attention-seeking losers who can be stopped. Everyone, when we gang up and step in together, can stop one or more bullies.
- Students, you can stop bullying before someone gets seriously hurt.
- Run quickly to get help from an adult, teacher or call the police.
- Start recording with your handphone, near or far. Focus on the attackers so they can be undeniably identified.
Bystanders, get involved. If there are five bullies and 20 onlookers, five of you can team up and tackle one bully each, to isolate the abusers. Taekwondo or martial arts exponents, step up. Bullies will know it is not worth getting beaten up and walk away.
Bullies are losers who are empowered by our fears, our silence, and our unwillingness to get involved. Actually, they are cowards. If you isolate them from the pack, they will never have the guts to do anything. Our fear and impotence empower them.
Evil is when they bully to make themselves feel stronger and better. Evil is also when we let them.
Each one can help one. Do (secretly) audio or video tape incidents if you are called out to meet up with bullies or see anyone being victimized.
Go talk to your teachers or counsellors. Rise above your fears. If you are afraid to be identified, send your videos anonymously. These will provide evidence when doubts arise. Bullies’ families may be able to afford better lawyers than you.
With your feedback, teachers can do something with the bully and help the bullied. I am not talking about catching and punishing bullies by throwing them out of school.
Bullies have mental issues that need to be sorted out with compassion. They can be helped better in school and with professional help rather than incarcerated with hardcore criminals.
If we do not help them at this stage, they will move on to be bullies in their workplace or home. Bullying gives them meaning and sense of identity and feed their addiction for power.
They need help to find out what was it in their childhood that had caused this deep hole in their soul that only aggression can fill. They need to learn self-control of their inner rage, inadequacies, and find healthier resolutions and relationships.
When you become a doctor, please pay special attention to every case who are abused or bullied, dead or alive, in school or anywhere. Do everything to make sure every such victim, found dead or alive, have a voice, through your thoroughness and commitment to never exclude foul play until proven otherwise.
Do all you can to make sure the dead has a story to tell the court with your photos, detailed medical and laboratory examinations of every part of the body for every single abrasion, scratch or bruise, including all the orifices for sexual abuse.
Meticulous medical evidence, with videos or audios from eyewitnesses, prior teachers’ counselling sessions, the number of times the bullies have been caught doing the same thing to others, and their family histories will help the court get a better picture.
So that, even with good lawyers, the dead will not be doubly victimised, through insinuations of their prior mental states and implied suicide, rather than manslaughter.
The bullied child may have grown up in families that have not given them a voice or had suffered adverse childhood experiences. They do not know who they are and are vulnerable to people who call them “stupid”, “ugly”, “shorty”, or ‘baju hodoh”. They may not know how to get help or think they will not be helped or believed.
You can help. Be a friend, bring him to talk to a teacher or counsellor. Report a bully, so the counsellors can help him early.
Schools should have teachers on duty, in a specified location so students know where to go to get help in emergencies like bullying. Teachers should be rostered during breaks to patrol compounds and hidden areas like toilets. Their unpredictable patrols will deter incidents as bullies do not want to risk being caught.
Be bigger than our fears. I encourage all parents of my young patients to start taekwondo classes by 4 years old, or any martial arts (except for boxing or contact sports that impact the head, since repeated sudden shocks to the growing brain leads to early dementia).
More than self-defence, the child and future adult will gain an internal sense of strength and self-control, and will be able to step up and intervene effectively.
The timid child who is prone to bullying should go for martial arts classes to build muscular and spiritual strength.
Students, be the difference and make a difference.
Be the difference for the bullies, because they really do not know what they are doing, and they need help. Make a difference and train the bullied to learn to speak out, stand up and be stronger.
Study hard. Become well-trained. Be strong, Be brave. Dare to step up and speak out and challenge those who are unjust and unfair, and bullies.
If everyone will stop one, and if everyone will help one, we can stop this epidemic of bullying. We must because we can.
Dr Tan Poh Tin is a paediatrician.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
