November Blog Post

A few weeks prior to Thanksgiving break, we as a class diverged into a highly sensitive topic yet majorly important to discuss openly; bullying. Growing up in a military family, I was prone to witness bullying type behavior being around service members a consistent portion of my life, and moving from state to state and school to school, bullies were inevitable for my sister and I. However, even though we knew there were bullies and we knew we were always the new "fresh" meat on the playground, our internal confidence outweighed the verbal attacks and we flourished in public education. The reason our confidence soured was because of the support and love our immediate family showed us, and we always had each other's back when the going got tough. Although, our importance on athletics as a family could sometimes boil over and hurtful words or bombshells would go off, and the internal pain from family member to family member could potentially take years to heal. Tony Adams and Keith Berry, the authors of "Family Bullies" go into detail regarding all aspects of bullying within families and how important it is for the need of support and comfort.

Communication is important in every aspect of life, friendships, relationships, and most importantly maintaining well-balanced family ties. As we discussed in class, bullying through hurtful verbal usage or physical abuse can harm someone's self identity for years to come. Bullying in any context cannot be undone and in terms of a family situation, the bullying can leave scars forever. Berry and Adams state that, "The trauma of bullying entails not only the hurt of the attacks in the present, but the scars and memories that remain for victims, and their fear of possible reprisal in the future" (54). When there is bullying within a family whether it is between siblings, or parents, damage can be done to the upbringing of an individual and cause issues with social interactions for a long time. Not only does this affect the communication skills between a family, it can affect the skills of the child for his future relationships and friendships. This article goes in direct correlation with the discussion we held as a class where many classmates gave statements including a popular one, "Bullying can end lives" and keeping in mind the LBGT community that this generation sees on the internet and television on a regular basis, one must be "highly conscious of inappropriate bully-type vocabulary" (class discussion examples). Handling bullying the correct way can change the way our culture sees this standard. Bullying is seen on a daily basis in our society, through social media, television shows and even professional athletic teams. Bullying can overwhelm anyone at any age, so that is why this is such an important topic to discuss and revisit for blog posts. 

This article on bullying gave many examples of bullies within a family that caused damage to the relationships as well as the identities of the certain individuals. While living in a military family, sometimes we discuss our feelings with one another in a brute sort of manner, and we express how we feel about one another's actions directly. This has been a vital technique after many blowups where hurtful statements have been expressed in the past. In this new way, we can say how we feel in a appropriate way without inflicting emotional pain on the other person. This is one way to overcome bully instances within a family, however, in "Family Bullies" Berry and Adams give a final statement on how to handle family bullies in the future, "it is important to challenge and reconsider the canonical, non-voluntary understanding and social importance of these relationships, especially in extant research and everyday conversation" (56).