My topic for the month of August was bullying. The article linked was just the general description of what bullying is, what cyberbullying is, and how to stop it. I will include some links below to TikToks, and Facebook Reels that will show us as adults how bullying is just as prevalent as ever. Sometimes we often think that bullying just happens to kids at school or online, but the truth is, it happens to anyone, anywhere, at all ages.
The reason that this hits home for me is because most of my life, I have always been overweight. The truth is, I love food. Food is the one of the best things that I think God gave us humans, and I love all of it. I also used eating as a way to hide other emotions dealing with sexual abuse, and even bullying. Unfortunately a lot of the world finds comfort in food, and depending on how our genetic tree fell, we don’t have the ability to lose it quickly. I’ve spent a majority of my life ashamed, trying crazy diets, and crying for hours, but knew once I became an adult that issue would go away. The truth is, it got worse. I was unable to find a partner for a long time because of my lack of confidence in the body that I had, and it wasn’t until I realized that people who are continually rude and bully others are really just trying to hide their own insecurities.
I watched a video (https://www.facebook.com/reel/263912096231822 ) where the gentleman asked a woman if a man is not financially secure, is that why he dates plus size women. I thought the woman was going to scold him and tell him how ridiculous he sounded, but she said YES, that plus size women settle for “bad men,” because they know they cannot get better. As a plus size woman I was offended, and I think this is what is wrong with humanity. Bullying is about how the bully feels saying the statement, they don’t think about how the person on the other side is going to feel ever. Just like kids on the playground picking on the smart kid because they lack the same intelligence as who they are picking on.
The thing we need to focus on is what we can do as adults and parents to teach other adults and our children how to combat the bullying we see everyday. As an adult if you encounter someone who is bullying you, I hope your reaction will be to tell them that their words are not kind, but that you would love to help them work through why they have such terrible feelings towards you. Most times you will find that the grudge they are holding towards who they are bullying is directly related to a similar incident where they felt powerless. Now everytime they encounter that same situation, they automatically try to assume the upper hand and try to belittle the other person. For how to teach our kids it is a bit different. Children do not automatically come with the knowledge of how to help other kids through their problems so we cannot take the same approach. We have to make sure that our children know they have a safe space talking to us as parents so that they share that they are being bullied to start with. The next step is to make sure that we affirm who they are and what they are. Both children and adults begin to believe outside sources when they are not getting the affirmations that they need from their parents or loved ones. My hope is that one day adults will have the tools to continually be kind and raise kind children.
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