Breaking the Silence

A challenging period in life is adolescence. Scientifically speaking, this is the time when a person’s physical, emotional, hormonal, and mental changes start to occur as their body’s anatomy gets more complex. It’s a stage of life when people begin to doubt their own existence, become consumed by anxieties and insecurities, strive to blend in as much as possible to appear intriguing or attractive enough, and, in a time like today, the competition has gotten a little too intense. Too far, that it has culminated in youngsters disguising their uncertainties and anxieties behind facades of being intriguing, and for that, they’re willing to strain all the rules, and even go beyond that if it doesn’t work out, even if it means hiding themselves by bringing someone else down.

We are all familiar with the term “bully.” I am fairly sure a vast population, while reading this, is experiencing flashbacks of how they were treated back when they were in high school or secondary school, since, no matter how much we deny it, we have all suffered in one way or another. Bullies are ubiquitous and bullying is definitely a very terrible aspect of our society that we tend to cover by saying: “Having fun with friends is normal.”

It is stark reality that bullying encompasses more than just physical assault, catcalling, and name-calling, with emotional bullying being a genuine yet often overlooked form of harassment. Even the victim sometimes worries if he/she is actually being bullied or is it all in his/her head? Emotional bullying is when manipulation, sugar coated words and emotional abuse is done by someone who claims to be one’s well-wisher. For instance, many teenagers remain in unhealthy friendships and relationships because they don’t receive enough affection or attention, and when they do, they are drawn to predators who make them feel insecure in the name of love. They gradually trick them into believing things they otherwise wouldn’t, leading them to believe they are deserving of what they are going through. In a similar vein, the standards and norms we’ve gradually and inadvertently created in our schools lead our children to believe that being “popular” or “extraordinary” is directly correlated with their level of attractiveness, which is wholly untrue. We never educate our children the fundamentals of life and frequently overlook the facts. The basics of life indicate that not all of us are going to end up becoming celebrities, super geniuses or life altering motivational speakers; most of us will be living the same normal lives we run away from, since that’s how the world works. All we need to learn is to make the most out of it. The toxic culture of forcing youngsters to behave in a way that makes them “socially acceptable” is what damages them, and this is one of the key causes why children between the ages of 13-18 are most prone to being affected by bullying.

A simple and significant technique to save our kids on a personal level from a kind of factor which is not even obvious yet, is to be close to them. To comprehend that they also go through some important changes in life which drives them to question things around them, and leads to the ways they behave. As a teacher, I have often witnessed students tolerating the poor behaviors of their companions because they have a fear of being lonely, and as a student I have lived that fear. Once more, I’m fairly certain that many individuals have experienced that terror, and it’s time we made an effort to erase it from our generation. Many people accept things they wouldn’t otherwise and engage in some truly terrible behaviors because they are afraid of being alone. They occasionally suffer from emotional and physical abuse. To prevent kids from becoming traumatized and living in agony for their twenties or the rest of their lives, try listening to them instead of telling them to live their lives the way you, as an adult, want them to.

One of the most important things we must accomplish in this fast-paced world is to bridge the gap. The only people who can protect our generation from the predators that are attempting to capture their prey are us.