The bullying incident among primary school students in Shanxi is shocking! How can we prevent it?

Shortly before the long holiday, an outrageous piece of news went viral on the Internet.

abuse……

Beating...

Plus some unspeakable bad behavior...

No one could remain calm and indifferent after hearing what those two 9-year-old primary school students in a school in Datong, Shanxi Province, did to their classmates over the past two years!

Image from Legal Daily Weibo

Everyone wants the perpetrators to pay the price they deserve, but the two perpetrators are difficult to be severely punished at the age of 9. Regarding this issue, many discussions now focus on how to revise the law and how to punish such behavior. However, the law can only punish the results, and as a person who studies children and families, my biggest question is, what exactly creates such evil? How can we discover it in time and what can we do to prevent it?

Let’s start with some misconceptions.

Is it because the perpetrator lacks sex education?

Many people think that the mistakes made by two 9-year-old children are related to sex, and they need sex education. If they have received good sex education, this kind of problem will not occur.

But I am not so "optimistic" because sex education alone cannot prevent such bad behavior. It is impossible for a child's normal curiosity about sex during growth to lead to two years of extremely bad and fancy abuse of others. When explaining a child's behavior from the perspective of child psychology, we should never stop at the behavior, but look at the motivation behind the behavior.

In my opinion, the evil motives of these two children are worse and more terrible than their actions. Their actions are superficially about sex, but that is only superficial. What supports this behavior is their strong desire for power. They want to trample others under their feet and regard dominating others as the highest goal. If there is evil in human nature, then the extreme evil is the desire for power to control and trample on others. This desire will make people lose all the good in human nature, including shame and compassion...

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Are perpetrators born “bad guys”?

So, are these two children's bad motives innate?
Of course, based on the current information, we cannot make a conclusion, and we should not jump to conclusions about children. However, psychology tells us that if a person is born with antisocial personality disorder, he will lack the sensitivity to the pain of others and the sense of guilt. Such a person will not care about the pain of others, but only care about whether he achieves his own goals. Their highest goal is to control others and take pleasure in manipulating others.

However, people with innate personality disorders are a minority in the population, so we cannot simply attribute such problems to children who are born "bad" or to the inherent evil in human nature. If this is true, then are these things inevitable? Or, can we not prevent the development of such problems? Of course not. Attributing everything to the evil of human nature is meaningless in solving the problem, except for venting emotions, because this idea shirks the responsibility of education and environmental influences.

These factors may affect children

Human nature can develop into civilization or barbarism. The key difference between civilization and barbarism lies in belief. Different beliefs will lead to different behaviors. Children's beliefs are formed in the environment.

On the one hand, some parents believe that a good child is made under the stick, and they often beat and scold their children. Some parents even teach their children: "I would rather you become a dragon than a bear. We will beat you when you need to, and we will treat you if you get hurt..." When educating children and in daily life, they often use swear words. Some incompetent educators often do similar things to their students.

Living in such an environment of power control and threats of violence, children will feel that whoever has the bigger fist is the boss. They will naturally desire to control others and are unwilling to be constrained.

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Of course, it is not just the family and school that influence children, but also the entire environment.

Irvine Welsh, the Scottish novelist best known for his 1993 book Trainspotting, says writers looking to write crime stories now need only visit social media for endless “dark” inspiration. He himself often finds inspiration when browsing social media because “people are at their worst” there.

I often have no interest in social media, but in order to experience their impact on children's growth, I deliberately spent some time browsing various social media and short video platforms. As an adult, I clearly felt too many negative physiological and psychological reactions during that time. I was very scared about this: for an elementary school student, when he can browse social media at will without supervision and guidance, and the worst things of human beings are nakedly displayed in front of him, can the ignorant child insist on being a civilized person?

In short, the best way to deal with school bullying is prevention. Whether it is parents, schools or the public, they should not only ask what to do when such things happen, but should cooperate with each other to form a continuous prevention mechanism.

So, what should we do specifically?

Don't let your children become victims , and don't let your children become perpetrators.

As a parent, you must first know that in modern society, children should not be just the "property" of their parents. Children are also future citizens, and it is the responsibility and obligation of parents to educate their children not to harm others. For parents who seriously harm other people's children, the law should make them bear corresponding responsibilities. Based on my many years of experience in family education consulting, for an adult, the role of family education and admonition without legal punishment consequences is very limited.

In order to prevent children from being bullied, parents must also take responsibility. Don't think that educating children is just giving them food and drink, or that educating children is just focusing on their studies. Parents' education of their children focuses on cultivating their basic abilities and healthy beliefs, including the ability to establish relationships with others, the ability to recognize other people's intentions, the ability to express their own thoughts and feelings, the ability to solve problems, the ability to be confident and independent, and the belief in themselves, others, and the world.

Many people mentioned that teaching children to ask their parents or people around them for help is an important way to prevent children from being bullied. However, children need to have the abilities and beliefs mentioned above to do this. Otherwise, children may not be able to judge what they are experiencing, nor when they need to ask their teachers and parents for help.

Parents who do not cultivate these abilities and beliefs in their children, or parents who overprotect their children, really think that just teaching their children: "If someone hits you, hit them back" can prevent this problem? If the child cannot beat the other person, will he feel more incompetent and less confident? If the child wins, will he feel that only the strong can feel happy? It is even possible that what the child is facing is not bullying at all, but just a normal conflict between children. Simply "hitting back" will further intensify the conflict.

What children will face in the future is a complex reality, which requires complex coping skills. In fact, no matter whether parents think of countermeasures for their children, whether it is tolerance, fighting back or reporting to the teacher, none of them is universal in all situations. For example, fighting back is sometimes the best solution, but in many cases it is only the last choice. Children need to know not only how to fight back, but also when and under what circumstances they should fight back. It is the children who really face the problem. Whether they can cope well does not depend on what countermeasures their parents have taught them, but on the comprehensive abilities that the children already have.

Parents should pay attention to these situations when their children

Bullying can bring great psychological pressure to children, but sometimes children dare not or are unwilling to tell their families. Parents need to know how to find clues from the details. For example, children will have abnormal physiological and emotional reactions under pressure. For example, the following abnormal reactions should attract the attention of parents:

Physical reactions: including wheezing, allergic reactions, headaches, stomach aches, frequent colds, insomnia, nightmares, drowsiness, sudden changes in appetite, sudden weight loss or gain, a tendency towards eating disorders, sudden changes in sleeping habits, chronic fatigue, and insomnia.

Emotional reactions: including withdrawal, sudden refusal to communicate, signs of anxiety and panic, frequent depression, low mood, loss of interest in activities, compulsive overscheduling, sudden abandonment of many activities, unusual fears, sadness, irritability, behavioral regression, excessive clinginess or abnormal withdrawal, inability to concentrate to the point of not being able to hear clearly what others are saying, frequent anger, excessive sadness, fear or anxiety, etc.

Other changes: such as a sudden drop in academic performance, a sudden change in exercise habits, etc.

Everyone has a role to play in preventing bullying

Teachers and schools have an unshirkable responsibility to prevent school bullying. First of all, schools should provide teachers with relevant training to improve their awareness and ability to deal with school bullying. At the same time, they should firmly maintain civility on campus, make school bullying prevention courses a standard feature of schools, formulate a process for handling bullying incidents and a person in charge, tell students how to report bullying, maintain communication with students' parents and promptly detect school bullying, etc.

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Another very important point is the environment. It is impossible to truly control school bullying by relying solely on parents and schools, because children do not only live in the family and school, but the environment outside the family and school actually has a strong influence on children. Therefore, the whole society must take responsibility, especially to strengthen the management of social media.

Finally, let me briefly talk about the issue of boarding schools. It is a dereliction of duty for parents and teachers to only ask children to protect themselves. If they are in day schools, children at least have the opportunity to escape, see their parents, and ask for help every day. In boarding schools, only teachers and schools can bear the responsibility. However, how many schools and teachers have such awareness and ability? How many schools have provided relevant knowledge and training to teachers?

Therefore, I always tell all parents who ask me whether to send their children to boarding schools for study: " If you can avoid it, don't send them. Boarding schools should not be an option for minors (especially elementary school students) unless the family really has no other choice. "

I personally strongly suggest that boarding schools should be better managed and have higher entry barriers. At least there should be leaders and teachers who truly understand children's psychology, because boarding schools are more than just boarding schools. They have more responsibilities than day schools. As for teachers and schools that value the so-called reputation of the school more than the rights and physical and mental health of students and try to smooth things over when things go wrong, they are not worthy of being in education.

Of course, all of the above is easy to say, but once it comes to implementation, parents have their own difficulties, schools have their own difficulties, and relevant regulatory authorities have their own difficulties. However, adults all have their own difficulties. Are children the only ones to bear all of this?

Planning and production

Author: Wang Lin, Master of Education from the University of Tennessee, USA, majoring in Child and Family Studies

Review丨Tang Yicheng, Deputy Director of Beijing Zhongke Popular Psychological Health Promotion Center

Planning丨Ding Zong

Editor: Ding Zong