(I purposely covered my cousin's face)
Thanks to Facebook's ticker, my mom was able to find out about this. A group of young boys, which I believe are his classmates, are cyber bullying him: posting edited pictures of my cousin and posting nasty comments about him for the whole world to see. Mom is sure my aunt and uncle doesn't know about this yet, because if they already do, they have probably done something to stop this.
My cousin is already in his 6th grade and is attending a private school. He has mild autism, but that doesn't make him any less as a person. He is a fast learner, fluent in English (with accent) and a responsible boy whose passion is to become a chef someday (he knows how to cook and bake). And these guys who bully him use this condition against him.
Obviously, these kids don't know what they are doing, or maybe not. Bullying is a ground for expulsion. One may argue that it's child's play, but this had gone overboard. What you post in Facebook will be there forever. You can't delete your account, deactivating it is no use, and those pictures of my cousin will be behind his shadows until he grows old.
I look back and realized I've been quite a bully myself, though I haven't gone that far. When I was in 3rd grade, I called my seatmate "stupid" for not answering a question I kept on asking him. In 6th grade, the boys in my class were my friends. We hanged-out, cut classes (very rare case), and poked fun on a few classmates we don't like.
(credits to: Orange County)
That was elementary bullying as I experienced it. A recent US study shows that 77% of students are being bullied by their peers but as far as I am concerned, child bullying revolved only on taunting, teasing, calling others names and maybe a little pushing and hitting. In the advent of the internet, bullying evolved.
Though House Bill 5248 or the Anti-Bullying Act of 2010 was already passed, legislators find cyber-bullying problematic because most cases are anonymous. Also, minors cannot be penalized, so the most that they can do is to raise awareness and create a safer environment for children with the help of the school and the parents.
Cases such as these may cause trauma or affect one's behavior and I am highly concerned now with how my cousin is dealing this situation. I know that he is one strong kid, and with the help of his family, us, he'll be able to overcome this and continue to achieve what he wants to be. Those who are bullied are not the real victims, but the bullies. They are the ones who need attention and love from others, and the most we can do is to be sensitive to our younger siblings and cousins, because we'll never know that they are victims, and they just need a little bit of our love.
NOTES*
HEC'TOR, n. [from Hector, the son of Priam, a brave Trojan warrior.]
1. A bully; a blustering, turbulent, noisy fellow.
2. One who teases or vexes.
HEC'TOR, v.t. To threaten; to bully; to treat with insolence.
1. To tease; to vex; to torment by words.
HEC'TOR, v.i. To play the bully; to be turbulent or insolent.
