Apologies in advance for this long post.
I mentioned I'd been bullied a bit in school, just enough to where I began to dread class and would ditch school. In my youth, I didn't understand them. Wished they'd like me. In adulthood, I now have pity for them and am glad they didn't like me. Their lives turned out as ones I'd not want for my own. A few died young from over-indulgence in drugs, unprotected relations (STD), or violence (by their own hand, or by others).
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While I do not see it as a reason to excuse BK's taking the lives of others, AT ALL, it could be "his" reason to do so. Could it also be the reason BK came back after school break, as his friend described; as different, more of a bully himself? He did ultimately become a sort of bully, after school break that year. He'd made a change. He was slimmed down and was taking boxing lessons. He lost that same friend because he made moves on his friend's current girlfriend. High school stuff maybe, but had he already begun to depersonalize others' feelings? The bullied becomes the bully.
Either way, he's now a grown man, and he knows that there is counseling, and psychiatric care available to him, most certainly, if only because he has a family with ties to that community. He made a choice not to seek out help to deter his desire to commit violence, be it in-born nature, and/or learned behaviours.
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Interesting reads (especially if you have a child who is being bullied, or you see bullying characteristics appearing in your child).
A worried parent reached out to me, the school counselor, about her 14-year-old son, Adam. “After years of getting bullied, this year has been a gift,” Shauna said. “He’s made a bunch of new friends and turned everything around.” But then, Shauna told me, another mother called her. Adam had been mistreating her son, Nathan. In PE, Adam would make fun of the way Nathan ran. In social studies, Adam would roll his eyes whenever Nathan proposed an idea. He’d post altered photos of Nathan on social media, replacing his nose with images of penises and nipples. Then he’d tag him to ensure he saw all the mean comments.
Michele Borba, author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World, agrees that we can’t afford to overlook a child who resorts to bullying. “It’s learned behavior and can be unlearned,” she explains. “A big mistake is thinking it’s a phase. It’s not, and each time it’s repeated, it starts to wreak havoc with a child’s moral compass—he depersonalizes the other child and his empathy levels go down.”
They also won’t become hardened to the consequences of their actions. As Faris notes, kids who bully “learn techniques to rationalize pathological behavior, and that will not serve them well in the adult world.” But the greatest reason aggressors should stop, he points out, is the damage they’re doing to others.
Why would a kid who has been the target of teen bullying target another kid for similar abuse? Expert advice for parents who learn their child is the bully.
yourteenmag.com
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RECOGNISING THE DANGER OF RETALIATION
In response to their pain and anger, the victims often retaliate with similar bullying tactics, either against the original bully or against a weaker target. As the abuse worsens, they may become desensitised to how serious it really is and the effect it can have on others.
A recent study shows that young people who experience cyber bullying could retaliate and become bullies themselves.
adelphipsych.sg
I did not become a bully, but I learned to stand my ground. This typically confuses the daylights out of them.
