Bullying: Dysfunctional Homes, Domestic Violence Are Factors — Psychologist

A psychiatrist/psychologist with the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Dr. Charles Umeh, has said that bullying, especially among children, is common with kids who are subjected to domestic violence or are witnessing domestic violence in their homes.

He also said that some children, by nature of the kind of environment they grow up in, tend to be violence-oriented.

According to him, such children tend to drive their self esteem by overpowering others, saying this is one of the reasons they want to attach themselves to other persons, maybe trying to hang out with others in cultism and other boys’ groups.

Dr. Umeh, however, identified another aspect as personality disorder in children, saying; “The only thing we can look at is probably disorder in children which might metamorphoses into antisocial personality.

“Now these are people that by nature of their psychological makeup don’t want to be authority figures and they take delight in seeing others suffer and to them, its fun, so that is why we call it a personality disorder and they are very manipulative at the same time,” he explained.

Explaining further, the psychologist said: “When you talk about bullying, especially among the young ones, it is common among those ones who have witnessed their fathers beating their mothers or those ones that are subjected to domestic violence and because children learn vicariously, they always think that they can always get the things they need by getting on top of others.

“When you look at bullying in primary schools and secondary schools you may begin to ask yourself, do they follow the same pattern? In primary schools, you could see that the reason could be from watching what happens at home, dysfunctional homes, domestic violence.

“It could also be the kind of upbringing they have. Now when the upbringing is such that children are allowed to do whatever they want to do, and you know most young children want to avoid anything that is stressful, so in an attempt to do that, they end up not obeying rules, not knowing the standard that is expected of them outside, so they are kind of susceptible to group behaviour or group activities so that they will belong.

“So you can see that there are so many contexts, depending on how you are looking at it. And whatever it is, bullying has negative emotional consequences to the victims.”

On how to know if a child is being bullied, Dr Umeh said when you see that a child that is doing well, suddenly his or her morale begins to drop, and some of the skills the child has acquired before, he or she begins to drop them, or even becomes very nervous, and beginning to withdraw, it is possible that the child is being bullied.