The bullies’ mind and how to deal with it.
By Alexandra Canavati
Bullying is a big problem that affects lots of kids all around the world. Being bullied can cause many insecurities, lots of stress and can even convert school a place of fear, but have we ever thought of what the bullies think?
Bullies just don’t start teasing others for fun, some tend to act this way to gain attention rather from their families or friends. Another reason why kids do this kind of behaviors is to gain popularity, since they think that making other people feel worse about themselves makes them look much cooler.
Most bullies feel more important by doing this, since they feel much more powerful and superior than others. But sometimes there are occasions when the bully comes from a family where everyone is angry, either the parents are divorced or in lots of fights and tend to do this. For the kids who have this kind of family problem it is much easier to become a bully since they learn to act this way from how they see their parent behave and sometimes they behave this way just to get all that stress out of them and into the person who is being bullied.
There are occasions where the bullies have been bullied in the past and do it for others to suffer just as they did and to feel better about themselves.
Sometimes bullies know that their actions may hurt others, but others just aren’t aware that they are causing this much harm. The bullies who are aware of all the harm that they cause tend to not care about how they make others feel and often pick on the kids who are more sensitive than others. But one of the primary cause for kids to behave this way is to gain or feel power. As they bully small or sensitive kids, getting them to cry getting reactions in which they can tell that others are afraid of them can make them feel as if they have much more power over them.
As a kid, Tony Hawk was bullied for spending all his free time pursuing his dreams of being a profesional skateboarder, which was considered lame and nerdy. But he never gave up and never let any of the mean comments get in his way. Instead, "That gave
me the fire to push it even further. That gave me the reason to try harder and make it more legitimate," he told The Talks. "I felt like I had something that they didn't really understand, and I liked that. I liked that it set me apart, and I didn't care what they thought."
Hawk has now won over 70 skateboarding competitions in just 17 years, he has also founded his own company “Birdhouse”, and has made a charitable organization, the “Tony Hawk Foundation”. If he hadn’t pushed himself and ignored all the negative comments bullies used to tell him or make fun of, Tony wouldn’t be where he is now.
Sources:
7 Inspiring People Who Proved All Their Naysayers Wrong By Achieving Their
Dreams. (2016, August 24). Retrieved January 27, 2020, from https:// articles.aplus.com/a/successful-adults-who-were-bullied-as-kids? no_monetization=true
Lyness, D. A. (2013, July). Dealing With Bullies. Retrieved January 27, 2020, from https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/bullies.html