Bullying and Resilience

We read a lot about bullying these days. We also see and hear a lot about it in the non-print media. There are workshops, recommendations and guidelines for workplaces, those who work in healthcare and education. We know that some people are very traumatized by their mistreatment from others and suffer for years, if not their whole lives. However, we also know that other individuals who have been abused in these ways appear to function quite well. What makes the difference? That is a question that is getting more attention these days as people realize that it is more productive to take that preventive and positive approach about issues like this than to keep dealing with the aftermath.

Have you been bullied? Do you know why? How is it affecting you now? If you are in healthcare or education, how is it influencing your work?

I was certainly bullied as a child. As the only blonde white boy in a community of mixed-blood (indigenous and European), mostly darker-skinned schoolmates, I was easy to pick on. Some of what I experienced might simply have been because I was different. Some of it may even have arisen from some latent antipathy towards whites.

However, I also know that one of the reasons I got bullied was to do with religion. My father, who was described in those days as a missionary in this community, preached a more fundamental gospel than what was spoken in the other churches in town, the Anglican and Roman Catholic. Sometimes that led to considerable bullying, which under these circumstances, some might even want to call persecution. I remember one particular time being quite verbally and physically attacked on Monday because on Sunday my father had preached that "all your righteousness is filthy rags," a quote from the prophet Isaiah. People did not take kindly to their self-righteous attempts at living a good life as being referred to as perhaps worthless when, in the view my father would have preached, the only way to righteousness was to believe in Jesus and what he had accomplished on the cross on which he was crucified. I also remember other occasions where iced snowballs were thrown at us, and sometimes even stones. It seemed that this treatment of us was either ignored or even condoned by the Catholics in particular.

Another way in which our family's religious beliefs played into my being bullied was that we were of Mennonite background. Mennonites are part of a larger group within the Christian Church that does not believe in the use of violence. As a result, we were taught at home not to fight and also not to retaliate when attacked. That probably just continued to make us more of a target for these children at school or in the community.

Again, perhaps because of who I was ethnically, my female classmates in particular loved to give me a hard time. They would frequently chase me around and trap me against places like the school wall so they could press up against and kiss me. In the first years of elementary school, this was not something a boy appreciated. They seemed to consider this teasing and much later in life, I learned that among people of indigenous origin, teasing is considered a sign of acceptance, a compliment. I am not sure if this applied to what was happening to me. It certainly did not feel like that to me.

The physical attacks then continued until well in my teens. Even younger boys loved to attack me. However, this never made me fearful or hindered my attendance at school are going out with schoolmates to play after school. In part it was because some of this physical behavior was simply rough-housing on the part of my peers with no ill feelings attached. They could just as well play very nicely with myself and my brothers when it came to hockey, soccer, volleyball or other pursuits that we engaged in. Those are good times certainly helped compensate for the negative experiences.

I also believe that our home life was a major factor in my development of resilience. As far as I was concerned, we had loving and caring parents who provided generously for us under our circumstances. They spent a lot of time with us, which is what child wants. I had siblings to play with at home. Those sorts of things can make a home a refuge for a child who is bullied otherwise. That can help a child overcome the negative influence from bullying in the community. Therefore, if we are talking about prevention of bullying, looking at child's parents and their home life is one aspect of this. In some ways, having a good home life is a good bully-proofing measure.

Interestingly, I think another factor that helped in my positive development in spite of what I was experiencing was what I had also identified as being a negative contributing factor, namely religion. What our parents and their helpers taught and exemplified for us in their everyday lives towards us made us feel worthwhile. We knew that we were loved. This came not only from them but we also came to understand that it came from our Creator, that he also loved us and had made us good and considered us worthy of his love and care.

The bullying did come to an end, at least physical component. By this time, the verbal was not as prominent as well either. A number of us boys were hanging around one time waiting for Boys Club to start. This was an activity my father conducted in which usually consisted of some craft or building project followed by some spiritual input and physical refreshment, a.k.a. food and drink. It was a warm spring evening and the sun was still shining. Some younger boys were again teasing and I had enough. By this time, I was 6 feet tall and probably had developed fairly good muscles from all the pails full of water I carried from our rainwater cistern in the basement upstairs for washing, not to mention from the lake for drinking and cooking. I also had the responsibility of keeping our home supplied with fire wood for cooking and heating, which meant a lot of sawing, chopping, piloting and carrying wood. So, I actually picked this boy up by the front of his jacket and another grip on his pant legs and dropped him on the table of the saw which we were standing around. That caught them all off guard and that was the end of bullying for me. They realized that there was a limit to how much they could mess with me. I am not sure if that crossed the Mennonite boundary of non-violence and whether that is a measure that I would recommend, but it worked.