Bullying, Asthma And The Pack Mentality

We all know that kids can be cruel. We were kids once ourselves and the chances are that we  were cruel too. It’s the way of things for children to point out the differences they see in others and mock or bully them for them. You may be relieved to hear that this is natural, it’s coded into who we are as humans and it’s only as we get older or more knowledgeable that we learn to overlook the instinct to ostracise the different. It all comes down to the fact that we’re descended from pack animals and in packs anything different is attacked ruthlessly and destroyed to preserve the pack and eliminate any weakness. Now, this isn’t to say that bullying is okay. We, being the smart monsters we sometimes are have brought it to an entirely new level and as such it’s important to arm kids with ways of dealing with it without suffering the emotional scars which plague so many of us.

Chronic conditions which children very rarely understand can be a massive cause of bullying and asthma falls into this category. If they understood the condition better then the chances are that the bullying would never occur in the first place but education on these things can be sorely lacking in today’s classrooms. In a recent study in Derbyshire, Uk it was shown that chronic conditions like asthma are one of the main causes for bullying and can lead to children being embarrassed or ashamed of their conditions.

The irony of course is that as they grow, kids decide that actually they’d like to be different and by the time they approach adulthood nobody wants to be like anyone else any more. If you can manage it, make sure your kids class is educated on asthma and if you can’t then make sure your child is. If they know that there’s nothing to be ashamed of in their condition then any insults or bullying will have much less of an effect than it would if they grow to think there’s something genuinely wrong with them.