COMMENT | Building resilience among youth to overcome bullying

COMMENT | When I was seven years old and in standard one, there was a boy in my class who was loud and boisterous.

I don’t have a problem with people like that, except that this particular person was also quite a bully. He liked ordering people around and sometimes punching them as well. I was one of his victims and so I told my parents about him.

My parents are the kind who don’t get involved with their children’s lives in the sense that they were not going to confront the boy’s parents or report to the teachers that I was bullied. They wanted me to handle it myself.

Of course, if the situation was worse, they would get involved, but not if it is just simple everyday bullying. So, my parents told me to stand up for myself and show the boy that he shouldn’t bully me.

One day in class, he came up to me and started shoving me with a broom and asking me to sweep the floor of the classroom. I told him to stop it but he refused and kept shoving me. I got sick of it and punched him in the stomach.