Do Adults Bully Children In Their Own Families?
Do grown-ups bully the kids in their own homes? Sadly, the answer is yes. Poking fun at someone, so-called joking around, stops being funny the moment the person on the receiving end is hurt by it. So what happens then. Do we back off, or does their reaction become the green light to keep pushing? Helping a child feel good about themselves is among the family's biggest jobs.
Outside the front door, most kids will find no shortage of chances to be knocked down, picked on, and made to feel like they don't matter. Grim stuff. And plenty of parents will insist none of that happens under their roof. It does. It slips by unnoticed, gets brushed aside, or the person doing it skates free because, after all, a family member ought to be able to take a joke. What passes among adults is a different matter from what plays out in a household where small children with fragile egos are watching and absorbing. Can you really defend making a three-year-old cry on purpose?
Something I've come to see is how rarely we register what's happening right in front of us, and families are where that blindness runs deepest. The same patterns repeat, year after year, and nobody flags them. You hear lines like, "I was only teasing," delivered while the same unwelcome jab gets trotted out again. Then comes the follow-up: "I have no idea why he cries so much. What a crybaby."
Love is the thing that holds people together. A hug, a kiss, a compliment that's actually deserved, warmth in someone's eyes: none of that costs a cent, and all of it is worth more than money. So what exactly are we chasing when we trade it away? Is the idea that tearing someone else down somehow props us up? If so, we've decided the result excuses the method.
Picture watching a person kill a baby rabbit out in a field, purely for kicks, then laugh about it. Now ask whether a child is any less defenseless. They often know far less than you do, and plenty of the time they can't even follow what the adults around them are saying.