Managing What We Read

For many years now my friend has enjoyed her peaceful days working from the comfort of her home. She has appreciated not having to commute, especially during the winter months. All this changed last year when she had to share, from time to time, her daytime working space with her children. At first, she didn’t really appreciate that her home office wasn’t just hers any longer.

However, after overhearing a conversation between her daughter and friend, she was happy that her children were home with her. What she got out of their conversation was that one of the girls within their group was being bullied. Hearing this put her in a state of concern, though her daughter assured her that, unlike her friend, she hadn’t been bullied.

Like any parent in her situation would do, she decided to provide her children with tools to handle bullies if there was ever a need. That is when I received a call from her picking my brain on what etiquette I would teach to both bullies and their targets.

Sadly, as most children and teens are spending more time on phones and laptops, so to has cyberbullying increased. Bullies have easy access to our children because most of them have personal cell phones compared to years ago.

It has been observed that people find it easier to be mean behind a screen than they would normally be in person. I am of the mind that if we can’t say something kind, we should try to avoid saying anything at all. Furthermore, if something cannot be said face-to-face, it should not be typed out either.

Bullying is not always as straightforward as we might think. One might think to mock someone who is different as an innocent joke, yet it might be hurtful to the person who is the subject of the joke. If we stopped for a moment and asked ourselves if it is a noble thing to tease and name-call, we might not even go ahead with it.

By not engaging with bullies, they might over time feel disempowered and eventually leave us alone. We could save ourselves a lot of heartache by not opening emails or text messages that might come from hurtful sources. A delete button is a powerful tool we have at our disposal. Installing spam filters on our children’s phones and monitoring their social media presence might help reduce access to hurtful content.

Many artistic performers such as actors, singers, comedians and dancers have shared the lesson of avoiding reading the reviews and online comments about their performances. Words can be caustic to one’s confidence and character. So too can social media and emails from our extended environments.

It isn’t reasonable to expect all to like who we are. However, it is reasonable to expect our environment to be safe and manageable. If ignoring the uncivilized conduct of others isn’t working, and attempts to resolve the conflict haven’t worked, then we must take steps to manage our preferred environment so as to be healthy.