Bullying and Self-Esteem

“Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time.“

Above is the vague and nearly all encompassing definition of bullying that is promoted on the stopbullying.gov website.  That’s right, our government is spending your money on an anti-bullying campaign.  But that’s a good thing, right?  Bullies are bad and we shouldn’t mind that the government is trying to eliminate that problem from our children’s lives, right?

Of course we should.  To understand why, lets look deeper at the governments’ belief about bullying: “Kids who are bullied can experience negative physical, school, and mental health issues.”  I assume these claims are based on scientific studies but none are cited.  In any case, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if many kids who are bullied do experience these issues, so, for arguments sake, I’ll just take their word for it.  Another page on the government site claims that bullying causes low self-esteem.  For most people, this is the crux of the problem with bullying.  They believe that bullying hurts kids’ self-esteem and that leads to all sorts of mental problems that might plague someone their entire life.  The glaring problem with this belief is that no other individual in this world can hurt your self-esteem.  That’s why it’s called SELF-esteem – it is what YOU believe about YOURSELF. 

If you choose to base your belief about yourself on what others believe about you (or say they believe), that is now YOUR problem and you cannot blame that on anyone else.  The beauty of self-esteem is that we own it.  No one can touch it.  The old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” can be true for you if you believe it.  Your self-esteem is yours, don’t give it up to anyone else.

Perhaps the biggest flaw with the government’s definition of bullying is that it claims that bullying only happens “among school aged children.”  You can stop reading this if no one in your post-adolescent life has tried to bully you.  It doesn’t stop after childhood!  Many adults have been bullied by their colleagues, bosses, friends, spouses, and even, in some cases, by their own adolescent children.  People are sometimes mean to each other.  That is bullying by the government’s definition.  It’s going to happen.

So the problem with an anti-bullying campaign is two-fold.  The first is that bullying only hurts you if you let it - remember, it’s YOUR self-esteem.  So, the root cause of low self-esteem is oneself and, therefore, the only real fix is to fix oneself.  Am I blaming the victim?  Yes, because in this case the victim is also the perpetrator.  You may not be the one doing the bullying, but you are the one who is listening to and believing the bully.  No one can touch your self-esteem but you.  The bully can say and do all sorts of mean things, but he/she cannot touch YOUR belief about you.  If your self-esteem is low, that is your doing.  This is great news!  It means that you can fix it.  “Yes you can” believes in your ability to lift yourself up despite what others may think or say of you. 

The second problem is that bullying isn’t going to go away.  While kids need to be taught to be nice to one another, they also need to be taught how to deal with those who aren’t so nice.  If a child doesn’t learn how to deal with people being mean to him/her, I have no doubt that the negative issues alleged to be the product of bullying will plague him/her.  The anti-bullying campaign does not teach children that they are in control of how they feel about themselves.  This, really, is the only solution and the current anti-bullying campaign by the government won’t even touch it.

Full disclosure: I was bullied significantly as a child and, to my shame, I recall participating in bullying others once or twice.  Thankfully, I had parents who taught me that my self-esteem is my own and that I should be nice to others.