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Editor's note: Last month, a decades-old story about the alleged bullying behaviour of Trinidad and Tobago's newly installed prime minister resurfaced. With the country's general elections just over two weeks away, many have been using the issue as a political football, sidestepping the reality that bullying remains a pressing issue, the nuances of which are often not adequately addressed in schools. In an effort to contribute to productive, non-political dialogue about bullying as a social issue, we publish the following guest post. The author has been an educator for more than 25 years, during which time she has taught at many different levels, from kindergarten to adults. She is a facilitator of The Virtues Project, a grassroots initiative that develops programmes to promote character-building in schools, homes and wider communities.

By Salma Pantin-Redhead

What exactly are the specs for a bully? Can a three-year-old persistent toy grabber be called a bully? What about a five-year-old pincher? A six-year-old slapper? And a nine-year-old name-caller? Or do you only officially become a bully in secondary school when “teasing” becomes “assault”? Where do bullies come from anyway?

What if, rather than initiating a take-down of all perceived bullies, we put the label on the behaviour rather than the person? Because that is what bullying is — a behaviour that is learned — and its teachers abound.

There is an old Cherokee story where a grandfather is speaking to his grandson about life. The grandfather explains that inside each of us, two wolves are battling; one is angry, greedy, and resentful; the other is loving, kind, and compassionate. The child asks, “Which wolf wins?” The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.” Simple, right?

I don’t know if anyone sets out to raise a bully or to actively promote bullying behaviour, but it has become so entrenched in society that we don’t even notice the messages we are sending. Remember, children don’t need instruction; they simply follow what they see. Here’s what they too often see: their transgressions at home are met with a “bouff,” “hot slap” or “cut-tail,” more modern versions of the “kneeling on the grater” penance of a prior generation – unsurprising, perhaps, for a country still grappling with its complicated post-colonial legacy.

Such responses are not because parents don’t love their children but because good parenting is hard, and parents often resort to these “tried and true” methods when they are exhausted. Some parents don’t know any other way, after all; we live what we learn.

Some would have you believe that the challenges we are having with discipline in school are because we have been “sparing the rod and spoiling the child.” I dare to disagree. The ruler and strap are still closely associated with schooling. Children “playing school” usually spend far more time wielding a ruler and shouting at their “students” in the form of their less than fortunate dolls, stuffed animals, or even the odd pet, than anything resembling teaching. What the rod actually teaches the child is to beat someone into compliance, or hit when you are at your wit’s end, or strike simply because you can. There are, without a doubt, issues of poor discipline in many schools, but it is a problem far too layered to be solved simply by bringing back “de ole time days.”

Children also see bullying behaviour dressed up as figures of authority, with the stamp of approval that uniforms or titles bring, who insult, shame or even strike those over whom they have power. They see exchanges on social media, a petri dish for public shaming, where bullying hides behind a screen protected from accountability. They see dominance by any and all means glorified, while pacifism and gentleness are disregarded as weak and impotent.

So exactly which wolf are we in society feeding and which are we starving? In these conversations about bullies and victims, there stands another important yet apparently invisible character — the bystander. An argument could be made that simply giving witness to a bullying incident is participating in it, providing a much-desired audience to further inflate the bullying ego; that drive to impress through brute force. Added to that are those who may cheer, boo or egg on the behaviour. These passers-by may easily slip your attention; they look away or walk away so quickly it’s almost as if they were never there. Maybe they are ducking the label of “telltale” or hoping to protect themselves via the “drink water and mind meh business” policy.

From playpens to playgrounds to politics, bullying is everybody’s business. If we accept that bullying is a learned behaviour, then we acknowledge two things: that it can be unlearned, and that we have a responsibility to prevent it from being learned in the first place.

So how do we do this? Let me start by saying, not a workshop; at least, not a workshop alone. Workshops, programmes, rallies … while they may all have some value in drawing awareness to an issue, they don’t necessarily change behaviours. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do have a handy little three-step suggestion, which may involve changing patterns we ourselves have learned or inherited. This, ironically, requires discipline. Here goes…

When confronted with a situation that provokes an impulse to dominate, control or cause harm:
1. Pause. People who pause are powerful; they are thinking and evaluating before they act.
2. Desist. Remove from your conditioning any words or acts that cause pain; instead, rewire your responses.
3. Choose. Choose to find a better response, one with an aim to educate rather than punish.

We all have a choice to examine our own behaviours, to admit where we went wrong, and to commit to evolving. We have a choice to embrace the often-quoted, though less frequently practiced, idea of being kind. This is how we feed the wolf we say we want to win.