A father Bully.

“Just because you are bigger in size, you can bully others. Since you can bully my son, I can bully you.”

That’s a 43-year-old, adjunct teacher, telling a 10-year-old classmate of his son off. Here is the backdrop as reported. 

“After lessons ended on July 7, 2017, the boy was walking towards a gate at his school in the northern part of Singapore when Tan (the boy’s father) confronted him.”

“He grabbed the boy’s bag handle, causing him to move backward, and push him to a nearby rubbish shed. The victim was pushed onto a wall while the accused scolded the victim.” 

That’s where he talked about bigger size and issue a bully’s threat on the school bully. 

“The victim sought medical treatment around 9:30 pm that day and was discharged about two hours later.”

Tan “pleaded guilty to an assault charge yesterday and was sentenced to seven weeks’ jail.” Maybe two bullies does not a right make?

In mitigation, Tan’s lawyer said that his son was bullied by the young bully every day since early 2017. The boy would push Tan’s son and abuse him with vulgarities. 

His lawyer Cory Wong said: “Mr Tan had previously gone to the relevant school teacher to report the bullying but, alas, nothing concrete had materialised from his reports.”

“Tan was instead told that the victim had anger management issues, and felt that his concerns were being brushed aside. True enough, the school remained ineffective in doing anything to stop the bullying.”

So, from Tan’s account, he said that near the school gate, he “tried to verbally engage with the victim, but the victim had very cockily ignored him.”

“In the heat of the moment, and being a loving father who would staunchly protect his son’s interests, the above drove Mr Tan to act out of character.”

For all that, Tan was convicted and sentenced to 7 weeks’ jail. His lawyers had asked for a fine. 

Lesson? Well, the lesson here is about thinking and/or acting “out of character”. 

Trust me, when pushed to a corner, when the torment becomes unbearable, we all break. 

Some break and end up with self-destructive results. Some handle it with an emergency level of self-restraint, thereby confining the damage within limited impact. 

Either way, you can be sure that acting with reason is always the first to be let go when we break. 

In any event, I trust Tan as a loving father and an adjunct teacher at that time has learned his lesson.

Although he said it was not premeditated (as he had gone to school to pick up his son that day), I felt that it was nevertheless preventable. And it is more so in this particular situation since Tan was an educator in his own rights and he ought to have been exposed to similar situations. I even figure that he might have handled such situation before with other unruly kids. 

But I guess when it comes to your own son, things can turn out to be less idealistic and arm-length to more visceral and blood boil. That accounts for him acting out of character. 

Here, I recall a time when our son came to us and told us that he had been bullied by a bigger boy in his primary school. My wife then went over to the school and reported the bully. The school told us they will monitor the situation. We told our son about it and we left it as it is. 

As our son did not feedback to us after that, we thought all was well with him. However, in our weekly sharing as a family (many years later), we talked about it, and he shared that the bully still carried on his demeaning ways for some time after we reported him to the school. 

We asked him why he didn’t tell us, he replied that he did not see a point. The school could not do anything about it. We can’t be there for him all the time. He said he might as well adapt and avoid the bully until he finds another target. They often do after some time when the fun and novelty dry up.

That led me to reflect about the raw reality of being bullied. My daughters experienced it. I experienced it. Even when we become adults, working in the office, we may at times become target of bullies. 

No doubt we have to stand up to them. Report them, draw the line, challenge them, and let them know we are not afraid of them. But at times, things are more complicated than that. Not all bullies get the just desserts they deserve. 

At times, things do not change and we have to change. We have to adapt and keep a distance. We have to walk away and leave it behind us. We have to find our own resolution and go forward with our own life.

I believe it is an impractical and imprudent advice to tell our children that they must always expect the world to bend to their expectation or their sense of justice. 

Sometimes, it is about retreating to confront another day. Sometimes it is about accepting that it is not your fight. And sometimes it is about going all the way. 

Most times, it is a judgment call, and I am glad my son dealt with his situation in the best way he knew how then. It may not be ideal to some. But he is nevertheless able to move on with it and I believe pick his own fight when the time for him is ripe.