Ira Glass in an interview with Ira Sher on the Public Radio International entitled “The Cruelty of Children” explained reasons while children bully each other and even are mean to adults whom they might not like for one reason or the other. The strong and mean children bully the weak kids. They do this not only to children of their age, but are also brutal to anyone they are able to overpower and to control. A clear example of meanness of children was the man calling for help from a well and they refused to assist him. They could have helped the man by inviting other adults to help him out of the well. Instead, they decided to make jokes out of the man’s mishap. They chose not to help.
I was also a victim of a bully kid in my elementary school. It happened that our class teacher asked me to be the class prefect to monitor those disturbing the class with their noise and stubbornness whenever she was not in the class. There was a big boy in my class. Obviously, he was older than anyone in the class. Whenever our class teacher was not there, he would take charge of the whole class, bossing and bullying everyone around. If anyone refused to yield to his commands, he would kick, and say mean things to the kid and made every other pupil to start laughing. This was very painful.
I became his target as the class monitor. He would warn me strictly never to write his name among those disturbing the class’ peace. Of course, the teacher knew he was among the top pupils disturbing the class. He always threatened me until I had enough courage to report him to our class teacher.
I had to change schools because my parents were transferred to another area. I still met another bully in this new school. This time, it was a dwarf, who was muscular and was very mean to many of us in the class. It happened that we sat together at the same desk. He was always picking on me, making me feel uncomfortable in the classroom. I reported this to our class teacher and she punished him for acting cruelly to his classmates. That was not successful! He waited for me after school closed and beat me up for reporting him to our teacher. I stopped telling our teacher about him because his meanness became worst. I told my Mom about this and she waited for him to pass our house. One day she happened to get hold of him and she scolded him for been so mean to other children. My Mom also gave him a serious warning never to touch her daughter again. This made a deep impression on him and he was really scared of my Mom. He stopped been mean to me or any other children in my class.
I think he was mean due to his physique. This created a kind of inferiority complex within him. To make up for whatever was lacking within him, resulted in his bullying other kids. It was a lack of security in him that came out that way.
Anyone taking care of kids should be aware that some children are mean to other kids. Therefore, they can help these children to overcome their cruelty and be kind instead of been mean. They should try to find the root cause of a child’s meanness; this would help not only to caution the child, but also to avoid future cruelty.
