When Aqila Azalea Expressing About Bullying

By Tabrani Yunis

This morning, I was sitting on a bench in front of POTRET Gallery, the shop that I manage for earning money everyday. I was reading a book entitled Memulihkan Sekolah, Memulihkan Manusia " written by Haidar Bagir. I read it for helping me getting  some references for my writing. I am writing about about the problems of literacy in our educational institution in Indonesia which is stated as the emergency situation based in some data released by international bodies or institutions such as UNICEF, or others.

Suddenly my daughter Aqila Azalea Tabrani Yunis came and sat beside me telling that she had read book and story. I asked her what she had read. She said, she had read a lot. She told me that, because I always force her to read, since she is not fluent in reading yet. I asked her to keep practicing reading and then asked her to retell the story she had read. I like this way, because I can train her reading, and building her capacity to understand the text she had read. So, in the same time, she is getting better in reading, and understands  the text then more productive because she has to reproduce the story. Not only that, but she can be more confident in expressing her mind.

Aqila then asked me to listen to her story. I stopped reading and listened to what she wanted to retell. I kept the book beside me and kept listening to her. She directly told me what she wanted. Here is the story.

She told me that she wanted to tell me about bullying. So, as usual, She started her story with the word, once upon the time. It is really common beginning in telling story. Therefore I asked her why once upon the time? She laughed and then changed it with one day. Ya, there were some boys who really like to bully people and they really like to get people's money. They forced the students to give them money. Want or not, they had no choice.
Some of students tried to tell the teacher, but the teachers were not listening.

That is all what Aqila Azalea told me. She closed the story by giving lesson learned. She said, you can get the lesson learns from this story. Here is the lesson learned she gave me.
" Children may not do bully anyone, because we will be very addicted to bullying people and our future will have a lot of things happen". Bullying is very dangerous because it can make other people get stress, depression, and even lost motivation to be involved in public.

What made me interested in listening to her story not only because she can communicate in English well, but more than that, I can identify her capacity in expressing her knowledge about bullying. Just imagine that a 12 years old girl asked to be able to understand bully or bullying.
So, at the end, I asked her what she meant with bully or bullying.

Bullying is disturbing someone in a bad way, for example, when a child is eating something, one or some people disturb the child with bad words or taking the child's belongings and even hearting the child.

That is what she understands about bullying or bully. What about you? What do you know about bully or bullying? Let's give your comments