Reason #2761 why bullying is not just "child's play"

We all know bullying is wrong, right? Well, some of us do, anyway. But what some of us perceive as bullying, others think of as "kids just being kids" or "child's play" or "a taste of the real world." My take on it has always been that people who get away with bullying as kids grow up to be those assholes you know as adults.

And it comes as no surprise to me, at any rate, that bullying carries far more in terms of long-term consequences to the bullied than just in-the-moment emotional trauma. Those stress hormones do damage that, according to a new study out of Australia, can last a lifetime.

My favorite quote and one I want to nominate for some "Gee, Obvious Much?" award someday is this one:

Bullied kids are more prone to feelings of loneliness, depression and low self-esteem, as well as physical ills like headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, and recurrent upper respiratory infections and sore throats, Pollack says.

The loneliness is a given. So are the depression and the anxiety, the kind of depression that can lead to suicidal ideation at age 6 or 7, just wishing you were dead.

And I remember that anxiety. Lying awake every single night, worried that the next day, the people who were mentally and physically abusing me at my school would try to kill me, as threatened. I couldn't walk by anyone who made a sudden move without flinching, and to this day, I still can't. School, especially middle school, was one day of mental hell after another, constant mockery, persecution, physical assaults. I didn't know it at the time because I wasn't trained in endocrinology yet, but the effects of the stress hormones strafing my small body from the age of 6 or so must have been chronic and permanently damaging to more than my psyche. I built up tough shells of sarcasm and dry humor to protect the psyche, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do for, say, my vascular endothelium. Time does not, in fact, heal some wounds.

And it's for these reasons and more that I take bullying so seriously. That we all should. This isn't just "kids will be kids." It's not "man up, little dude, boys will be boys." Those kids who engage without negative consequences in this willful sadism are the ones who grow up later to become insouciant jerks, unaware in some ways of the tremendous damage they've done. What's their permanent affliction? I guess being jerks. But the permanent afflictions of those whom they tortured may be far less obvious...but far more damaging.