Unparenting by Reema Ahmad

Author:Reema Ahmad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2022-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Bullying

I have often wondered what words would look like if we were asked to put a face on them. It’s easy enough to imagine words like beauty, grace and sorrow. But what would the word ‘crushed’ look like? I had never imagined I would find this out until the day my son came home from school with a face that said, ‘I’m crushed.’ But within that crushed feeling, I noticed in him a ripple of anger that scared me. Fists clenched, cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed and his small chest heaving in painful, sharp jabs of breath that left air trapped somewhere in his throat. Something in my boy had erupted.

A classmate had called him a Pakistani terrorist in school. My son loves the Indian flag; he keeps it in his drawer. He believes in the idea of protecting the nation just as much as he believes in the fact that chocolate is the best thing ever. He is too young to know how flawed that idea is and I don’t have the heart to give him a reality check just yet. His heart broke when he was called a ‘bad guy’.

‘I’m not a bad guy, Amma, I’m a good guy! I don’t get into fights, unless a friend is being hurt.’

How could I explain to him that the child who called him names was not a bad guy either? That good guys and bad guys weren’t labelled in stark black-and-white. How could I explain to my child that the other kid was probably confused and angry and wanted to hurt someone because he probably didn’t know another way to deal with his angst.

I wish there were a simplistic, bullet-pointed method to explain the dos and don’ts of bullying to children.

Is your child aggressive? Five things you can do to fix that.

Is your child hitting classmates? Follow this easy method to curb this tendency.

Is your child being bullied at school? Five things you can do to prevent that.

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