23/08/2025

SATURDAY | AUG 23, 2025

18 Normalising cruelty at our own peril W HEN I was in school, bullying was there – the name-calling, the pushing in corridors, the whispered P O T T U O N P O I N T

remember that bullies existed but there was a line they rarely crossed. Maybe because adults were watching more closely or maybe because shame still worked as a deterrent. Now, shame has been weaponised, humiliation is entertainment and violence is content. A child’s pain is just another video to scroll past. As a mother of two, this terrifies me. My son is 10, my daughter is seven and autistic. I worry constantly. What kind of environment are they stepping into? Will my daughter, who is already navigating the world differently, be mocked for the way she communicates? Will my son learn that silence is safer than speaking out? Will teachers step in when cruelty erupts or will they turn away because it is “not serious enough?” I don’t want my children to be either victims or bullies but I know prevention requires more than just parenting. It takes a whole ecosystem – teachers who protect, schools that act firmly, parents who hold their children accountable and a society that rewards kindness instead of aggression. Right now, we don’t have that; we have fragments. The question is: What has changed between then and now? Technology, for one, social media has stripped empathy from interactions. Children learn early that attention is currency and cruelty is the fastest way to earn it. But it is also about authority. When I was a child, teachers had a kind of unquestioned authority. Today, some teachers fear parents more than students. Discipline has become a minefield and somewhere along the way, the protection of children became negotiable. Here is the truth: children are not born cruel; they learn cruelty. They see it at home, in politics and how we treat one another. They absorb the lessons we don’t even know we are teaching – that mocking is funny, power means domination and silence means survival. If we want to change the bullying culture, we must change the

jokes about my looks or background. I still carry those memories, though I rarely speak of them. But what I see today feels different – darker, more vicious. And unlike in my time, it is starting earlier, spreading wider and costing lives. From the death of 13-year-old Zara Qairina Mahathir, to the 2013 case of 16-year-old Wan Ahmad Faris – found lifeless in his school dormitory toilet – and the loss of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Reserve Officers’ Training Unit (Palapes) cadet Syamsul Haris Shamsudin at 22, the list of bullying tragedies is long. Yet, the cases keep surfacing in our schools and universities. Each headline hits like a fresh wound. We mourn, we rage on social media, we whisper “how tragic” and then we move on until the next life is lost. Bullying in Malaysia is still not a hot topic; it is treated like a one-off tragedy, not the cultural sickness it has become. Bullying has always existed but now, even children in primary school are doing it. The cruelty is not confined to classrooms or dorms; it follows victims home through their phones. In my day, if you were teased at school, the shame stopped at the school gate. Today, it is filmed, shared, mocked and replayed a thousand times online. The playground has turned into a stage and cruelty has an audience. So why is this happening? Are teachers less strict? Are schools too eager to protect their reputations instead of their students? Or have we, as parents, grown too busy, too quick to defend our children, even when they are wrong? Maybe it is all of this. Maybe it is the kind of society we are building where children learn more from TikTok than from textbooks, more from influencers than from parents and more from silence than from action. When I look back at my childhood, I

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“If we want to change the

bullying culture, we must change the

The cruelty we tolerate in schools today will become the cruelty we live with as a society tomorrow. – SYED AZAHAR SYED OSMAN THESUN

wound was the silence that followed. When I finally found the courage to tell my parents, they brushed it off: “Just ignore it.” But ignoring did not stop the fear, erase the names or heal the wound. That is why I know bullying is not confined to the school compound; it lingers long after the bell rings. And now, as a mother, those old scars make me more afraid for my children. What frightens me most is not that bullying exists; it always has. What frightens me is how much we have normalised it and how little urgency we show to change it. We need to ask ourselves: What kind of children are we raising and what kind of future are we shaping? Because the cruelty we tolerate in schools today will become the cruelty we live with as a society tomorrow. And if we don’t draw the line now, we may one day look back and realise that we allowed an entire generation to bleed in silence. Hashini Kavishtri Kannan is the assistant news editor at theSun. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com childhood experiences – we can begin to approach ourselves and our parents with compassion rather than blame. I often tell my clients, before you can forgive your parents, you need to heal first. You don’t have to forgive them simply because they gave birth to you, raised you or paid for your education. If they injured you physically or emotionally, those wounds are real and valid. Don’t rush to forgive out of guilt or societal pressure – heal yourself first. Breaking generational patterns requires courage to look inward and acknowledge our own wounds. For parents, awareness is the first step. When we catch ourselves reacting from old wounds, we can pause and choose differently through therapy, mindfulness and learning healthier ways of relating. For those still healing from childhood, remember that understanding your parents’ pain does not minimise your experience. Your feelings are valid, your struggles are real and healing is possible. The little child within you deserves the love, safety and acceptance they always needed. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give the next generation is our own healing. Nahlana T. Kreshnan is a somatic psychotherapist and life and executive coach. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

environment that makes it thrive. That means schools must stop treating bullying as “normal growing pains”. Because it is not; it is violence – psychological and physical – that can shatter lives. Teachers must be trained to identify, intervene and prevent it. Parents must be willing to hear uncomfortable truths about their children instead of lashing out at schools. Children must be taught empathy as deliberately as they are taught mathematics, not left to pick it up by chance. We must also talk openly about mental health. Victims of bullying often carry invisible scars for years. Some never recover. I know because I am one of them. I was called fatty and black mamba because of my dark skin, and afro because my hair was short and curly. I feared going to school. Every morning came with a knot in my stomach. And it wasn’t just words – once, a girl slapped and shoved me because I refused to buy her food from the canteen. I carried that bruise on my body but the deeper

environment that makes it thrive. That means schools must stop treating bullying as

‘normal growing pains’.

Unconscious parenting and the invisible wounds they inflict I HAVE never been a mother, so I cannot profess to knowing what it is like to bring up a child or children. moments in their little bodies.

generational cycles of pain. Many years ago, long before I became a therapist or knew anything about therapy, I recall a friend, at that time in his 40s, telling me how his father once told him, “There is no love lost between us”. He was just 10 years old at that time and it was something to do with a Christmas decoration that he had misplaced. That little boy was so hurt by his father’s remark that he thought his father did not love him and he carried that sadness into his 40s. I suggested he have a chat with his father, and one morning, just before breakfast, I saw them holding each other and weeping. Later, my friend told me his father had not remembered anything about that incident but sadly that little boy carried that for more than 30 years. This story illustrates how parents, operating from their unhealed wounds and unconscious patterns, can inflict lasting damage without intending to. The father likely spoke from his own pain, completely unaware of how his words would echo in his son’s heart for decades. This is the tragic cycle of unconscious parenting, where our unprocessed trauma can become the source of our children’s future struggles. The cycle does not have to continue. When we understand that most parenting happens unconsciously – driven by our own unhealed

It is important to note that it is not only parents who shape a child’s psyche; other caregivers – grandparents, nannies, maids, teachers or anyone in a position of authority – can also leave lasting imprints on a developing mind. I recall a client whose family maid would threaten him whenever he misbehaved: “If you’re naughty, the policeman will catch you and lock you in a cage without food and water.” That child grew up with an unnatural fear of police officers and, as an adult, is triggered whenever there are roadblocks or any situation where law enforcement is involved. What seemed like harmless discipline to the maid became a deep-seated trauma that followed him into adulthood. This does not mean parents or caregivers are evil – it simply means they themselves often did not have the right role models when they were growing up. The truth is, people who are hurt tend to hurt people. Most parents are completely unaware of their own neuroses and the emotional baggage they carry from their childhoods. Without conscious awareness or healing, they unconsciously pass these wounds on to their children, creating

However, I do know what it is like to be a child and, as an adult, what it feels like to look back on my childhood and see all the dysfunction and problems that led to me having ADHD and depression in my adult years.

Also, as a somatic psychotherapist, I see so many adults struggling with their lives because of the environment they grew up in. Some clients are clear about their feelings towards their parents. One confessed, “I hate them for destroying my life.” Another admited, “They worked so hard and sacrificed so much for me – I feel guilty speaking badly about them.” Yet another said, “I didn’t choose to be born.” As I listen to their stories, my heart breaks for them because inside that adult is the child who really wanted to be loved, nurtured, cared for, seen and heard. I remind my clients that they are not in therapy to vilify their parents; they are here to understand how their childhood moulded them into who they are and to help them recognise how those little children perceived each parent’s words and actions, and where they stored those stressful or traumatic