"I win....you die.", I remember first hearing this as my 5 and 7 year old grandsons would declare a victory over each other in one game or another. In my day we may have crowed, "I win...you lose." when we raced each other up a hill, or played hide and seek, but in the day where play is so influenced by videogames the phrase became "I win...you die.". I have to wonder how much influence that has had on the prevalence of, and the devastating effects of bullying today.
To be sure there have always been bullies. I remember Dickie T. the adolescent kid next door when I was in elementary school (yes that would be as far back as the early 1960s). Always ready to taunt, chase, intimidate and give nugie's (knuckles on the top of the head...owww), to smaller, weaker kids, Dickie was given a wide berth by most of us. But we had a triumphant day when my older brother Bobby tried to stand up to Dickie, (perhaps he was just cornered by Dickie, but I prefer to remember it as standing up to him). Dickie made a fist and, putting his full force behind hitting Bobby on the head he swung his fist, missed, and wound up connecting his wrist to the top of Bobby's head. Bobby yelped, but the triumph was that Dickie howled and doubled over in pain grasping at his now fractured wrist. Dickie was in a cast for 8 weeks, and I don't remember him bullying us after that.
When your video character dies there is no funeral, no weeping relatives, no pain or suffering...you simply get a new life, and start playing again. "I win...you die, let's do it again." Are our children engaged in such play being robbed of developing empathy for others?
Empathy is the antidote to bullying.
Certainly empathetic children don't bully others, but more importantly empathetic children stand up for each other against bullies. The research is clear that having adults provide intervention in response to bullies in not effective. Telling the teacher, lunch duty worker, or other trusted adult is often our first advice to kids being bullied, but it doesn't work. Our kids know that. They don't tell on bullies because it makes it worse. Bullies just get sneakier.
What stops bullies, or at least reduces the damage they cause? The most effective response is when kids stand up to kids who are bullying. Sadly most kids today will not do this. They are either grateful that they are not the target, so they keep a low profile, or they are going along with the torment in order to gain popularity.
When Dickie T. used to bully us, we had each other. He would call us 'idiots and knuckleheads' (among other more vile things), and we would declare, "I know you are but what am I?" We would turn to each other and affirm that we weren't those things...Dickie was. When my brother stood up to Dickie T. he had a crowd of kids surrounding him, cheering him on, celebrating his triumph, commiserating with him when he hurt. We had friends who countered the taunts of the bully. More often today kids who are singled out by bullies, lose all friends. It is this isolation that makes the torment of the bullies so devasting to kids.
I'm not suggesting the destruction of all video games, violent or not. I am suggesting that parents, teachers, coaches, aunt, uncles and grandparents have to bring some balance to what children today are experiencing. We have to help kids develop empathy, to care about their peers, to understand and experience that in real life, people's feelings matter. We have to coach our kids into standing up for each other.
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