Comparison Essay: Parenting Style and Bullying

Introduction & thesis

If you are looking to raise your child to be good, then there is not really a book on the subject that covers all children. All children are born different, and even identical twins that are treat the same will often develop very different personalities. Parents have bullied their children since humans first started walking the earth 3000 years ago, and this essay compares the positive effects of bullying a child with the negative effects of bullying a child.

Points for bullying

The bullying may be done in order to dominate the child. There may be a dynamic where the child is constantly trying to gain the upper hand and dominate the parent.

This is very often the case when it comes to single parents. The child will often dominate the parent to the point where the parent has to call the child (as young as four years old) to ask if they can stay out a little longer with a friend. Quite often the bargaining chip the child uses is a massive tantrum that causes trouble for the babysitter, which makes it harder for the parent to find a babysitter in the future. There are numerous techniques that help remove this dominance from the child and make the parent the dominant one again. There are techniques such as consistent behavior, especially when dealing with consequences doled out by the parent (not by threats or acts of violence or bullying).

There are also techniques such as not yielding to the threats of the child so that the child learns he or she has nothing to control the parent with. Another technique is bullying the child so that the child becomes subordinate and no longer tries to dominate the parent. Even if the child feels that he or she has a bargaining chip, that bargaining chip will not be used for fear of being bullied more.

Points against bullying

It can lead to a number of socially mal-adjusted conditions, with the worst of them leading to self harm and erotic feelings for being submissive and harmed by others. There is also the chance that the child will get older and react violently to the bullying received as a child, though many times that violence is doled out to other people. The most common outcome is that the child will grow up to be shy and submissive by nature and therefore easily exploited, abused and used.

The child may also grow up to understand that he or she was bullied as a child by his or her parent and start taking it out on the parent. In many cases the child will grow up to bully his or her child, and in many cases the child will bully other people too. Kids that are bullied at home are known to bully people at school and when they grow older too.

Conclusion

It is not a good idea to bully your child because the potential negative repercussions far outweigh the potential positive repercussions. There is a high chance that the child will be socially and mentally maladjusted and the returns for a parent are even less promising and the child may grow up to take out his or her anger at being bullied on the parent.

This may either be via an active or passive route.