Social cruelty among children is very common. It is most seen in children of above 9 years of age. Unkindness in children is often an outlet of aggression. Another reason for this behavior in children can due to the insensitive treatment faced by them at home. In some cases children who indulge in social cruelty are often victims of cruelty themselves. What they experience at home, they mirror those actions outside home. It gives them the delicious sense of power they lack at home. Whatever be the reason, social cruelty nonetheless is an important matter to be dealt with.
Types of social cruelty:
Teasing or calling names is the most common form of social cruelty. Kids tease the ones weaker than them and feel satisfied by making them miserable.
Spreading rumors is another form of social cruelty. Gossiping or revealing secrets of another person thereby humiliating or even slandering that person’s reputation comes under this act.
Another form adopted by kids is expulsion of other kids from their circle. Here the victims are ignored and isolated by denying them social associations.
Bullying is probably the most popular form of social cruelty where the bullies exhibit verbal as well as physical assault over the victims. Here the ones bullied are always under threat of intended or actual harm.
If a child is suffering from being subjected to social cruelty, they should learn to be resilient. Courage and self-respect can help them face it .If you feel that there’s something wrong with the kids behavior then encourage the child to speak out and inform you about it as they will need emotional support. It is also important to avoid retaliating with violence. This only makes the matters worse.
How to deal with the unkind child:
First thing to be remembered about such children is that they are often the ones who need help. They might intentionally indulge into social cruelty but subconsciously they are dealing with a lot of courage and self-esteem issues. So the first step is to find out what exactly is bothering them.
Punishment rarely works well with such children. They are already an aggressive lot and punishment just makes them more and more determined to go the wrong way. Punishment is never helpful in educating such kids. Hence, one needs to apply a lot of time and effort in trying to change the kid’s mentality.
Kids learn what they see. Hence, they will not understand the virtue of compassion unless they are first treated with compassion. Hence, to teach the child kind ways, one needs to set such examples for the child to follow.Dictating terms on the kid is a bad strategy as it makes the kid more and more stubborn in their ways. Hence, one should gently guide the kid and teach them to choose the right instead of the easy.
Hence, empathy and good interaction is something which can help children to come out of their tendency of being mean and teach them to treat everyone with respect.
