It’s important to teach children from their first interactions with other people that bullying is not right. Even if it is in response to being bullied. However, they will not always listen and correcting this behavior will require more work than just giving an order. After all, bullying is probably a manifestation of a more serious psychological issue.
Even if it won’t be easy, parents have to be prepared with a lot of patience and understand that the method of fighting fire with fire will not help. You may think, who would bully their children to make them not bully other people? These kinds of parents exist, as is evident from a viral TikTok video and agreeing comments that prove that there are more of them.
More info: TikTok
A video went viral on TikTok which showed a boy standing by a busy street holding a sign saying "I am a bully. Honk if you hate bullies"
Image credits: userxgwig52jip
The video was posted earlier this month by Gavin Klein, also known as userxgwig52jip on TikTok, and it now has 6.4M views. It shows a boy standing on the side of the road holding a sign that says “I am a bully. Honk if you hate bullies.”
It’s not entirely clear if the man and woman sitting nearby were the boy’s parents, but it appears that people assumed they were.
Presumably the parents were sitting nearby and watching their son
Image credits: userxgwig52jip
The cameraman and his friend in the car immediately called the parents bullies for making their son do this
Image credits: userxgwig52jip
Gavin and another person who was in the car with him at that moment when they saw the scene both thought that this was not a good example of how parents should deal with their child being a bully. You can hear them say “that’s so foul,” “that’s so mean,” “boo parents” and “I want to yell at the parents.”
It seems that other people on the street were not impressed with this parenting technique as nobody was honking in those 13 seconds that the video lasted. Or maybe they didn’t feel hatred towards bullies, which also can be a possibility.
Below you can watch the video for yourself
Although the cameraman considered this punishment to be mean, not everyone agreed with that
We don’t actually know what other people on the road thought of bullies and about these parents deciding on a quite harsh punishment, but TikTok users didn’t shy away from commenting.
While many people shared the sentiment with the author of the video, there were also a significant number of people who thought that the punishment served the boy right.
Almost all of the most liked comments under the video were in support of the parents
Actually, all the top comments were agreeing with the parents. If you scroll down just a little bit, you’ll find that a comment with over 230k likes says, “If you disagree with this as a form of punishment, you’re soft lmao. Kid needs to learn his lesson.” Another comment with over 200k likes says “Bad parents? Lol dude you are soft and that one great way to handle that!”
People were saying that the kid will get a taste of his own medicine and will never want to bully again
So many people thought that this was an appropriate way to let the child know that bullying is not acceptable. They argued that this memory of embarrassment would make the boy think twice before bullying again. They were saying that only people who haven’t been bullied may think that this kind of punishment is too much.
But there were people who disagreed and believed this will further traumatize the boy and make him misbehave even more
While the parents surely wanted to teach their kid an important lesson and didn’t ignore his behavior, there were people who agreed with the cameraman who deemed this punishment to be too cruel.
Also, they guess that this kid will hate his parents when he grows up and will not want to have anything to do with them. A suggestion that some made was to go to a therapist instead of publicly humiliating their son.
Psychologists would say that embarrassment is not effective long-term, but it will leave scars. Psychology Today says that this is a quick-fix approach and if parents want effective results with less damage to their children’s mental health and the relationship between them, they have to model that behavior themselves and listen to their children. It will not give immediate results, but love and affection are often what children need and they show that by acting out.
They said that there is probably a deeper issue with the child and public humiliation is just a quick fix that won't eliminate the problem
Gary Walters, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, says that constantly humiliated children have a higher risk of developing depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, so this kind of method can even be considered abuse.
Not only can it be damaging to the child’s life, but also to the parent and child relationship as this kind of punishment may make children feel resentment. Experiencing such punishment may very likely lead to the children shaming others to cope with their own problems.
While everyone agreed that bullying should not be ignored, the method of teaching a lesson in this situation definitely got some mixed views
Bullying is definitely wrong and being bullied brings its own problems to a child's mental health. But being humiliated is also not a fun experience and there are better ways to correct a naughty child’s behavior.
Parenting is always a sensitive topic as people have their own ways but we still would like to hear from our audience who you would side with. Do you think that these parents are doing a great job and are teaching their son a lesson or do you feel that public humiliation does more bad than good? Let us know in the comments!