Parents Colonizing The School: The Bullying Nobody Talks About

Nowadays the reality of bullying at school is no longer invisible, thanks to courageous voices, to looks that refuse to adopt a passive attitude and many victims of this great social problem who have understood that they have no reason to be ashamed or feel stigmatized.

It is difficult to fight bullying in a socioeconomic structure that fosters dysfunctional or harmful values, values ​​that are the perfect alibi for those with a bully mentality. Just take a look at sports, shows, television programs, video games or television series to understand that the problem is now rooted. There is, however, a sign of improvement and it is very powerful: the fact that it is finally being talked about.

The “parties” involved: a whole that reflects our society

The bully is justified by certain virtues that are associated with success and charisma. The victim, on the other hand, is stigmatized and discriminated against for his particularities or simply because he has been attributed the role of scapegoat.

The audience of spectators, which is often large, refuses to get involved in a conflict they do not feel as their own because society teaches that it is not “profitable”, “pragmatic” or even “counterproductive”.

If we want bullying to finally be eliminated, we cannot remain on the surface as bystanders or as receivers of complaints of any kind of abuse. Bullying and mistreatment go beyond beatings and teasing.

Sometimes, the bully is a faithful reflection of what the environment foments: the rejection of excellence, the cancellation of diversity, the exclusion of originality. You choose a vulnerable, unprivileged target. It is not only the goal of anger, but also the obvious consequence of everyone’s mistake in identifying it in time.

Mercantilism and the false concept of success as the origin of today’s bullying

Bullying as we understand it now has been a taboo issue for years. Now it is the adherence to the new-age of psychology and pedagogy influenced by wild competition. Everything is taken for granted, the resources of the school are commodified, the footballs are thrown away if the children do not fit.

We don’t talk to them about other realities and we don’t work on empathy, which could prevent many cases of bullying. We are not painting too dramatic a scenario, we are saying that advances in available resources do not go hand in hand with advances in education. This means that there is no point in having a 10 in any subject if you have a 0 in education.

If what we want is equality and true education, then we can achieve this. The indispensable condition for painting a warm and comfortable reality is to understand how to avoid bullying. There is no magic truth, you have to work on it continuously, day after day, you have to foment common sense and not indifference.

Parents who colonize the school space: a bullying nobody talks about

We must learn to identify the characteristic aspects of bullying and how they hide in new behaviors and this concerns parents, teachers and pupils. In recent times, the overprotection of parents, as well as the absolute attribution to teachers of educational tasks that would be up to parents, are creating serious problems of discipline within the classrooms.

There is substantial confusion between the roles and wishes of the parents. On the one hand, they want their children to spend as much time as possible outside the home doing various activities. On the other hand, they claim to have total authority over all the professionals who work with their children.

This affects education in general, but the problem of bullying in particular. How can professors and psychologists report a situation of abuse when their skills are systematically challenged by parents and pupils themselves?

The denaturalization of the school development of many children today represents the main difficulty in identifying cases of bullying. An increasing number of activities are carried out within the school. Birthdays and parties that should involve everyone, but instead see certain children excluded by decision of the parents of other pupils.

Arguments between adults that reflect on a common space. Other parents are bystanders but refuse to take a stand. Professors cannot count on reliable collaborators and data to change the dynamics of the situation. Boys and girls see exclusionary behaviors strengthened. Bullying of children in school is fueled by the attitude of the parents.

Many adults start behaving like “children”. They systematically question teachers, deny any wrong behavior of their children, discriminate the behavior of other children by amplifying and feeding conflicts between children, instead of opting for dialogue. It’s a silent bullying, which nobody talks about.

Let’s not let bullying take on new forms

We try to promptly identify this new type of bullying that certainly does not cause less discomfort just because it is “silent”. We do not turn our children into puppets broken by our frustrations, giving them labels that arouse the Pygmalion effect in the adults they are in contact with.

We let our children make their mistakes before arrogating to us the right to make judgments about their behavior and personality, which then affect others in how they relate to them. We avoid becoming silent spectators, but above all we avoid fomenting bullying among children with our attitudes.