I was discussing with some peers recently about whether bullying makes children stronger, and it got me thinking deeply about the subject and its facets. Bullying was a particularly prominent issue as I was growing up, with the increasing popularity of the Internet among children and then the rise of online bullying, which made it easier to bully anonymously and harder for adults (parents, school administrators, police, etc.) to crack down on it. The 2000s saw a handful of highly publicized cases of children such as Ryan Halligan and Megan Meier being driven to suicide by bullying that was too much to bear.
By the 2010s, when I was in high school, the bullying issue had mushroomed into a full-blown epidemic. With it, everyone scrambled to come up with solutions. One sentiment that I’ve increasingly seen expressed is the notion that bullying makes children stronger, whether in the form of comedians joking about it, or testimonies from folks who experienced bullying claiming it made them stronger, or a simple point-blank putting forth the statement as a thesis for one’s argument.
I completely disagree with the statement, and I find it problematic for a number of reasons. But the main issue I have with it is how it places too much emphasis on resilience.
In doing so, the “bullying makes kids stronger” idea follows this increasing trend of what I consider a worship of resilience. It fits right in with widespread tropes about how “children are too sensitive, children are too coddled by their parents, children are being set up to fail in the real world because they’re being cultivated into oversensitive snowflakes,” with the solution being essentially that children should just be told to suck it up and little elaboration or nuance beyond that. On a base level, I feel that this line of thinking misunderstands the meaning of the word “resilience.”
It implies that resilience means letting every taunt or insult hurled your way slide seamlessly off you, to never have one’s feelings hurt, to essentially be numb.
I don’t think that any reasonable person would deny that everyone needs some degree of resilience and a certain level of ability to shake things off. But that is only one part of the package for being a healthy, functioning human. It is also important for children to learn how to process and get in touch with their feelings, and to advocate for themselves.
For schoolchildren, gradually building up their level of resilience and raise expectations a bit higher the older they get. Simultaneously, teach them to read conflicts or bullying and see if they can resolve situations themselves before they go and tell an adult. Teach them to advocate for themselves, to say, “I don’t like when you do that,” and “I want you to stop.” If this does not work, or if the bullying is physical in nature, then they should be able to tell an adult.
When resilience is overemphasized or placed on a pedestal, it often gives off the implication that resilience is mutually exclusive to vulnerability, when I would say the two go hand-in-hand. Resilience is not always ignoring emotions or letting everything roll off you. It can also be processing one’s emotions and knowing how to navigate them in a manner that allows you to acknowledge the hurt, but ultimately move on.
For issues such as mental illness or trauma from sexual abuse, it can mean efforts to keep such issues from interfering with one’s life or ability to function. Resilience can also mean standing up for oneself, and standing up to one’s bullies or abusers can be a sign of respecting oneself enough to not allow oneself to be pushed around. Those who idolize resilience often forget the opposite end of the pendulum, in which shaking everything off can mean tolerating toxic or abusive qualities in relationships.
It is important to note that this can all vary depending on the person, which is part of why “bullying makes kids stronger” is so problematic–the evidence that exists tends to be mostly anecdotal, and just because one person experienced bullying and found that it made them stronger doesn’t mean everyone does. Furthermore, people can come out stronger from painful, even traumatic experiences, but that doesn’t make said experiences good.
Some may come out stronger on the other end from experiencing sexual abuse, but that doesn’t make sexual abuse a good thing, and for everyone who does come out stronger, there are many other survivors, of bullying, abuse, or other traumas, whose confidence and sense of self-worth are tarnished by these experiences.
In addition, I fear that the overemphasis on resilience behind the notion that “bullying makes kids stronger” might serve as an excuse for schools to simply not do anything about bullying, and create an environment in which children with mental health issues cannot feel comfortable talking about them, nor can children marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, or disability who might face bullying rooted in the mechanisms which oppress and dehumanize them.
In a time when children are taking their own lives because bullying is so bad, telling them to “suck it up” is not advisable, and it is not helpful or accurate to insinuate that bullying makes kids stronger.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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