What Are We Teaching Our Children About Bullying?

I don't know how many more parents I can hold as they break down and tell me about the child they have lost to suicide. I have honestly lost count.

But there is something I keep hearing, something that has come up in almost every conversation with these parents, and I find it extremely difficult to comprehend………..

Bullying.

Parents telling me about their children taking their own lives. About friendships that turned cruel, relationships that ended badly, humiliation at school and messages sent online. Sometimes, messages telling their child they should kill themselves.

Which is horrifying. No matter what age you are or what the circumstances may be, it is NEVER okay to tell somebody to harm themselves.

Suicide is incredibly complex, and I would never suggest that one experience alone explains why someone takes their own life. But bullying is something that keeps appearing in the stories these families share with me.

And I cannot help wondering what we are missing.

I think about these parents long after the screenings have finished. Parents who are trying to understand what happened, who will never have another conversation with their child, celebrate another birthday or share another ordinary day together.

There is something incredibly confronting about listening to a parent describe the cruelty their child experienced, knowing that the people involved may simply have moved on with their lives.

It has made me think about my own childhood.

When I was at school, social media was only just beginning. We had Bebo, and I remember a close friend being bullied online by another girl who was also my friend. The things they would write about her were so mean and simply not okay.

I knew it was wrong. Looking back, I am ashamed that I didn't stand up and say something. But back then, I didn't know how. I didn't want to rock the boat, and I sure as hell didn't want to become a target myself.

Around the same time, I remember sitting in maths with the same group of girls, who would constantly muck around and treat our teacher, Mrs Cameron, terribly. Eventually, she encouraged me to move away from them, and I did.

But I remember how uncomfortable it felt. The girls would call out, "Come back!" which quickly turned into, "Oh, you think you're too good for us now?"

All I wanted was to go back to where I felt accepted.

Fortunately, I had another voice in my head reminding me how hard my parents had worked to give me that education. And I also knew that if Mrs Cameron rang home and told them I was being a little shit at school, I'd get my arse kicked!

Looking back, I realise how powerful that need to belong was, even when I knew the behaviour was wrong.

Now, you might be thinking, "What the hell is she telling me this story for?"

But if you can, think back to your own childhood.

Was there a time when you knew somebody was being bullied? When you knew what was happening was wrong, but you didn't say anything?

Can you remember that feeling?

The fear of becoming the next target. The fear of being excluded. The overwhelming need to belong.

Remember just how intense your emotions were at that age.

Your friendships, your school and your first relationships felt like your entire world. You hadn't lived long enough to understand how much life would change or how many people you were yet to meet.

And in rural communities, I wonder whether this can be even more difficult.

The children you go to school with are often the same children you play sport with. Their parents know your parents. Families belong to the same clubs and community groups. And today, those connections are amplified to an entirely new level because everyone remains connected through their phones.

The interconnectedness of rural communities is one of the things I love most about them.

When somebody needs help, people arrive. When tragedy happens, communities rally around one another.

But perhaps the very thing that makes our communities so good at caring for people can also make social conflict incredibly difficult to escape.

The same network that carries care can also carry pain.

And this brings me to something else I have been observing.

We spend an enormous amount of time teaching children that bullying is unacceptable, yet I look at the behaviour of adults and wonder what example we are setting.

We all hear people say, "Oh, kids are cruel," "Kids are so mean these days," or "Online bullying among children is rife."

But then I look at the way adults behave, and I wonder whether we are really any different.

Take a look at social media.

Look at the comments directed towards athletes, politicians and ordinary people. Look at the way we gossip, take sides and make assumptions about people whose circumstances we may know very little about.

Sometimes bullying is obvious. Sometimes it is far more subtle.

It can be disguised as humour, concern, an opinion or even the belief that somebody deserves to be held accountable.

And I find myself wondering why we are so good at recognising bullying when somebody else is doing it, yet so good at justifying our own behaviour.

Is it jealousy? Insecurity? Spite? Fear of change? Or simply our own desperate need to belong to a group that has decided somebody else doesn't?

These are often the explanations we give children when they tell us somebody is bullying them.

But perhaps we need to start looking at our own behaviour as adults as well.

I'm sure most of us have experienced some form of bullying, exclusion or cruelty as adults. And it still hurts.

We have the maturity and life experience to understand that somebody else's opinion doesn't define us. We know we cannot control what everybody thinks or says about us.

Yet that doesn't necessarily make the pain disappear.

So what must it feel like for a child whose world is so much smaller?

I don't know what the answer is.

But I do know that every time another parent shares their story with me, I find myself thinking more deeply about the responsibility we all have.

Not just schools. Not just parents. Not just social media companies.

All of us.

Because our children are watching how we speak about people we disagree with. They are watching how we behave when we are angry, how we treat people who are different from us and whether we have the courage to challenge cruelty when it comes from somebody we like.

And perhaps we also need to give children more places to belong, so that when one friendship ends or one group turns against them, they know there is a much bigger world beyond it.

I wish every young person struggling with rejection or bullying could somehow see what we come to understand with age.

This is not your whole world.

There are people you haven't met, places you haven't been and parts of yourself you haven't even discovered yet.

And perhaps the greatest responsibility we have as adults is not simply telling our children to be kinder.

It is showing them how, while making sure they have the support and protection they need when somebody else isn't.