Just 3 days ago, I was at the park, and a 6-year-old boy repeatedly punched a 4-year-old boy in his butt, his fists clenched tight. This is not something new for us. This boy has been this way for a long time. Over the years, many kids had been roughly shoved, toys snatched away and rammed into. Strangely, his mother, who is always 50 meters away, never reacts to anything he does except an occasional acknowledgement when confronted by very angry parents.

So when this happened again, out of instinct, I opened my mouth to shout at him only to see the victim’s mum running towards her son, in utter shock. She started reprimanding the bully boy, and I looked up to see if the bully’s mum knew what was happening, and saw what I usually see – zero reaction.

This 6-year-old bully has in the past tried picking on adults too which did make some of us angry, for being put in a situation of having to deal with a child so young, for the parents’ failure to address the underlying issues, and for letting the community around them face this, with an attitude that doesn’t show a jot of empathy.

So today, I saw this news, where a girl was bullied under the on-going ‘skull breaker challenge’ where she was kicked dropped onto the floor, sent home from school on a bus and was carried by her parents to the hospital. I heard it first from a WhatsApp group and saw pretty horrific videos of people being kicked and dropped on their backs with some barely moving after that. It was pretty disturbing - the lack of empathy and the state of mind. Normal kids play pranks and do sometimes get injured, but no one deliberately breaks backbones, or skulls for that matter.

The teens that engage in this behaviour, therefore, clearly have issues. And parents know it, because bullying is never one off. A parent would know if a child is a bully from his/her behaviour at home, at school and in the neighbourhood. But why do they turn a blind eye to this? Is it because their child is not the one impacted? Is it because they see no legal repercussions?

I strongly feel that child/teen bullies have a lot to do with parental accountability, or lack thereof.

Some parents are great bullies, and their children learn from them. Some parents neglect their children’s well-being and bullying gives their children the means to seek attention from others. Other factors include the environment, nutrition and inherent psychological issues. Whatever the factors are, the child is the parents’ responsibility until he/she is 18 and there are ways to work around this. Changing themselves, changing the home environment, giving more time to kids, seeking counselling or asking help from the school or the community is all part of parents’ responsibilities. More important than all this is the collaboration with neighbours, teachers and with other parents, to ensure that there are extra pairs of eyes and hands to handle such troubled kids and to take some burden off their parents.

But if parents of bullies start defending their kids despite repeated complaints and have elevated egos about their parenting qualities, what can the parents of victims do? Can they do onto the bully what he/she did to their kids? Can they teach their children to counter bully? Can they conspire with other community members to get the bully child transferred out to a remote school or impose social sanctions on the family and ostracize them until they leave the neighbourhood?

Because seriously, with these wayward kids/teenagers, what are other parents supposed to do? Caution the good kids not to play this game? But it is not a game and no teen in her/his right mind will volunteer to have his back broken or his skull cracked. The bullies probably pick an unsuspecting ‘loser’/’victim’ and play this horrible prank on him/her. What can this be if not bullying?

Anyway, while we debate this, new laws are underway in some places to put the accountability back to the parents of the bullies. A city in New York for example, has a law where parents may be fined $250 and jailed up to 15 days if their child bullies someone. In New Jersey, there’s a proposed bill that would impose civil liability and requires parents to take a training class with their child for bullying. Parents would also face fines from $100-$500.

Like some may argue, kids will be kids. Exactly. Until they become adults, their thinking and behaviours mirror the time, effort, value systems and beliefs inculcated by parents. If they can break other people’s skulls for the sake of a ‘game’, it does say a lot about what their parents, directly or indirectly, have put in them and it is only fair for such parents to see the game through its finals.