How To Raise A Bully: Things Parents Do That Make Life Difficult For Everyone

Very few people in the world go through the effort of having and raising children with the purpose of making their kids socially unacceptable. Most parents do the best they can and work hard to give their children a happy life. Unfortunately, bullies do not just magically appear. They are created over time by parents who often unwittingly encourage their behavior and then turn a blind eye to the repercussions of what they have done. Here are some of the easiest ways to make certain children grow up to be the reason other kids suffer.

Be Inconsistent With Discipline

Never setting limits at home, or only occasionally following through with discipline, is an easy way to make it impossible for them to understand consequences. Even more effective is always taking their side in conflicts with other people. This can lead to them believing they are always right and should be allowed to do whatever they want.

Use Aggressive Parenting Tactics

Aggressive parents who handle children roughly, refuse to provide positive reinforcement and use alienation techniques to keep the other parent from being involved in the life of the child are making great strides in damaging their children. In some families this occurs because the parents themselves are angry and frustrated and take their emotions out on their children and each other. This type of parenting helps children to learn how to bully, because they experience it daily for themselves. It becomes easy to then take the fear and anger they feel out on their siblings and classmates. 

Ignore What They Do

Bullies often have parents who are completely out of touch with their lives. The parents do not attend school meetings, are not familiar with their friends and never bother to learn about what they are doing online. This is something that may start when the children are very young, and it lets kids to know they are not important and there are no consequences for their actions. Some children gradually increase the extent of their bad behavior just to test how far they can go, or with the hope of getting noticed.

Provide a Poor Example

Many bullies have an amazing role model in their parents because they have watched bullying behaviors firsthand. They see it when their parents are rude to waiters or store clerks and they hear it when parents insult and degrade each other. Or they watch their parents undermine the authority of their teachers by not allowing the school to discipline properly or insist on a certain standard of behavior. These parents yell slurs at the TV or show aggression while driving or at athletic events. They prove to their children every day that being the loudest and meanest is the fastest way to get whatever they want.

People who notice these traits in themselves need to do whatever possible to stop them. Reading stories about bullying can help them to understand the genuine pain it causes. It is not only necessary for children who are bullied to learn how to stop it from happening, but for the bullies themselves and the people who create them to learn how they can stop this unnecessary trauma. 

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