What if it's love?

I started talking to a friend during my vacation in Riga. I asked her to remember if she was bullied as a teenager. She described how a classmate constantly harassed her about a gap between her teeth, and then, when she developed scoliosis, he would roll a double sheet from her notebook into a flagellum and, giving it a curvature, showed the class what her back was. And she hit him on the head with a ruler for it. I asked her to remember if any of her classmates had joined this “bullying” and received a negative response. Then I came to the conclusion that in this case we are dealing with teenage love, not teenage mobbing. A very fine line separates these violent expressions of teenage love from bullying. The girl is likely to perceive such a bully as a persecutor, not as a lover. I remember when I was 14 years old I was dying of fear when a high school student ran into my refusal to dance with him and started calling me and threatening me with physical violence. I shuddered at every phone call; I only went to and from school in the company of my classmates. And, of course, I couldn't tell my parents about this, with whom I was very honest, as I was sure that they would accuse me of misconduct. I was ashamed and scared. And on his part, perhaps, it was a sign of great and bright feeling. But who knows?.. It seems to me that this problem of “not distinguishing” love and bullying in adolescence may later come back to a failure to distinguish between love and violence in family life.

I am tormented by the question of how to teach our children to identify mobbing? How can they be taught a strong aversion to bullying and persecution? How to get children to have a frank conversation that will help them understand what is happening to them? At this age, mobberism is often seen as normal. I have already written on the site that parents could read books and watch movies about this topic with their children. While discussing a book or movie, a child may open up. And let me give you one more tip. Share with your children your teenage experience going through mobbing/bullying as a mobber, a mobber victim, and an observer. Tell them how later, even many years after the fact of mobbing, it can become bitter and ashamed to those who bullied and those who silently watched the bullying. Explain to children that teenage abuse is not the norm in school life and it is not a temporary problem of adolescence. This is real cruelty and violence that should not have a place in our lives.