Bullying Is Not Cool
The news that my niece was being bullied in school compelled me to write about my own experience with bullying. I only fully understood the seriousness and effects of bullying when I came to the UK. It was also then I only realised that in fact, I was bullied too- as a child and perhaps as an adult. You see, I grew up in a country were teasing other children in school was and still is a norm. What a lot of people didn't and still don't realise is that teasing can actually be a form of bullying. Children often take advantage of other children's weaknesses. They laugh at other children's disabilities. They find joy in calling other children nasty names. They physically hurt other children to show them they have power over them. All of these seemed to have been accepted by the society that I grew up in. It is very shameful to admit that even grown ups did and said things that they didn't necessarily knew was bullying. In short, there was not enough (or none at a