Bullying at the heart of many problems

Although details are still coming out about the fight Wednesday at Wharton High School that resulted in two students getting stabbed and three being arrested, it does appear that bullying is at the center of the confrontation.

I cannot condone nor excuse resorting to violence to resolve the problem, but as the former victim of bullying I can completely understand the emotion behind it. The feelings of helplessness, anger, and fear can be overwhelming to a person, especially a young person still developing emotional maturity.

I was mercilessly bullied from my early elementary school years through my first years in high school. The elementary years were the worst. Not only did I not know how to handle it, but the adults in my life didn’t know either. I was always told to man-up and take care of my own problems or, worse, I was flat out not believed by teachers and other adults.

I have never handled confrontation well, and as a child the fear of confrontation practically paralyzed me. Rather than standing up for myself, I became a whiney, crybaby tattletale, which only made things worse. All I wanted was to be left alone or at least to be friends with everyone. Some kids just couldn’t leave well enough alone. The more I whined the meaner they became. Likewise, the adults appeared to get tired of my whining and refused to listen anymore.

I often felt alone. I feared going to school, which is where most of the bullying occurred. I was so negatively impacted by bullying that my grades suffered. I equated school with fear and pain and distrust. It was hard to focus on school work when I was drowning in dread of being taunted and/or beat up during recess or on the school bus after school. I lacked the understanding and the ability to express my feelings to adults who basically wrote me off as being one of the dopy, dumb kids.

I spent a lot of time daydreaming and plotting my revenge against the bullies. I was filled with as much hate as I was fear toward my tormentors. Had I the courage back then, I probably would have lashed out and seriously maimed or possibly even killed someone. Instead, I accepted that I was just a stupid, whiney nobody.

I no longer feel that way today. In hindsight, I’m glad I never physically hurt anyone. Ironically, if I could go back in time and tell my younger self to do something, it would be to pick one of the bullies and beat the living snot out of him. That would have made a huge difference in my life. But knowing the younger me, I would have been too afraid to heed my own advice. I would have written myself off as just another adult who didn’t understand and/or didn’t care.

As an adult, I have no problem standing up for myself. I’ve learned a lot about bullies since my childhood. Most of them act the way they do because they are being tormented in some way or another and acting out is the only way they know how to respond. They pick on someone smaller and weaker than themselves.

I learned many years after the fact that one of my bullies was the son of an alcoholic who was beat by his father. He just took it out on me because I was younger and smaller. It made him feel big and tough.

It’s ironic that the fight at Wharton High School happened during National Bullying Prevention Month. Today there are so many programs and things to teach anti-bullying that you would think that it would no longer be a problem. It is a problem and probably worse than ever. The solution begins and ends in the home. Parents and guardians need to develop better parenting skills. That would solve a lot of the problems our schools are facing beyond bullying.

Children need to feel loved, wanted, cherished, needed, and cared for. They must have discipline (both orderly and corrective). They need direction, correction, trust, and feelings of safety and security. They need to know the values of respect, integrity, trustworthiness, selflessness, honesty, and such.

I haven’t figured out how we instill those character traits and values in generations that have lost them, but we need to find a way. Otherwise we can expect more of the same and a continuing disintegration of social skills and abilities.

Joe Southern is the managing editor of the Wharton Journal-Spectator and the East Bernard Express. He can be reached at news@journal-spectator.com.