So here are some thoughts on this.  I am so happy that some schools are thinking about a more positive approach.  Unfortunately too many time we say we want to stop bullying.  It is very hard to do negative things.

The idea of looking for kind acts, for rewarding kindness or even having a ‘kindness’ group/club is a good idea.  Teaching should always be done in a positive way rather than a negative way.

More important than having a policy, is to have a ‘culture’ of no bullying.  When I speak of culture we are speaking about what is expected of all in the community.  Our community is not just the students, but also the teachers, administration, safety officers, and parents.

To develop this kind of culture we must teach and model the values that promote ‘no bullying’.   So what are some of those characteristics.  Empathy, Kindness, Courtesy, Manners, Fairness, Respect, Open-Mindedness, Tolerance.

In fact, when we model and expect our community to demonstrate those qualities, that is when we are building culture.  All of us can begin with ourselves and check to be sure that we are practicing these qualities and then when we teach them we will be teaching from a position of authority.

“Research now suggests that bullies, their victims, bystanders, parents, teachers, and other adults in the building are all part of an ecology in schools that can either sustain or suppress bullying behaviors. And finding a solution to the problem requires a similarly broad, multilevel response . . . .

The solution is not as simple as having a program for the school.  It is not as simple as blaming it on the bullies home life, or it is just the way kids are.   It is not as simple as having rules, laws and punishments or zero tolerance policies.  It is really about what the culture of the community is about.
Every child needs at least 3 adults that are a part of their life in a significant way.  But if all of the adults do not demonstrate caring and respectful attitudes both towards the students and each other, bullying will never end.  If our students see the adults in their life use their power, intimidation and anger to get their way, it will be impossible for the students to live their life in a different manner.
What this means to us is that this is not easy.  All of us are responsible and determine whether bullying will continue in our schools and community or not.  Yes we are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution.

One way of accomplishing this is to think about what it is that you may represent or stand for.  Let’s say you are on the football team and you get a reputation for being mean and short tempered.  Others may think that everyone on the team is like that.  I remember my parents telling me that I represented the family and the family name.  So if I was to mess up in some way it brought dishonor on our family.  You may have something else that you represent.
For me today, I am a martial artist, black belt.  I stand for all that represents.  I do not want anyone to think badly of martial artist and more important I would like everyone to have deep respect for the martial arts based on what they know about martial artist.  I must keep my cool!

You could also bring the problem to the attention of the school administrators. Maybe they could move your locker or switch your schedule so you don’t have to see the bullies as often during the day. Just remember that high school does not last forever (although it may feel like it at times). Soon you will be in college or working and will have plenty of opportunities to meet people with the same interests as you. After high school, people are generally more accepting of others—or at least more willing to choose their friends based on less shallow criteria.

Tips on How to Deal With Bullies

• Don’t be an easy target.—Your body language tells a bully whether you are vulnerable or not. When you stand up straight, talk in a loud, clear voice, and make eye contact with the bully, you show him or her that you are not vulnerable.
• Avoid isolated places.—Bullies are more likely to cause trouble if you are alone in a place where no one can see or hear you.
• Watch for trouble.—At the first sign of bullying, try to deflect it with humor or by changing the subject.
• Find a close group of friends.—The saying that there is safety in numbers is true. If you and your friends stick together and protect each other, bullies are less likely to view you as a target.

This summer Balanced Life Skills will be offering a Bully Prevention program call Verbal Judo.  It is the same information that is taught to police officers so they can keep themselves and others under control in a kind and mannerly way, but taught just for those who want to avoid being bullied.

I always fought for the underdog because I was the underdog myself, and I can’t stand people who abuse other people. When I was younger, I was bullied because I didn’t have the nicest clothes, or the nicest anything; I was shy, and I stuttered. I had countless fights during recess. I thought it was typical young kid stuff, and the only way I knew how to deal with being bullied was to fight back. At school I kept a tough exterior. I held my chin up high and kept moving forward because I was raised that way.

If I saw someone being bullied, I would get in the middle and fight, no matter how bad it was, and attempt to stop it by punching someone, but that didn’t work because then I became the victim of fights, and the people that I was “saving” weren’t really grateful, anyway. A lot of them would get mad at me and say things like, “Why did you do that?” or “I could have handled that myself.”

One time I got in the middle of a fight. There were three 13-year-olds punching this younger kid, who was about 10. I was 11 at the time. I had no idea why these guys were punching this younger kid, but my moral clock went off and said, “That’s not right,” so I got in the middle of the fight, broke it up, and the 10-year-old ran. The three guys started punching me then, and I lost, with a bloody nose and a black eye.

When I started to attend TST BOCES Community School, everything changed. I realized that violence is not the answer. Violence worked for me in order to deal with bullies, but I don’t condone it at all. Bullies are cowards because they know they’re picking on the weak link. They like to insult people about their clothes, their hairstyle, where they live if it’s not such a nice place. Bullies always push another person to his or her limits, both physically and mentally.

Violence is not the answer. It escalates the situation, and there are bullies in this world wherever you go. Even when I thought I was going to help someone, I knew that punching another person wouldn’t mean they would just walk away — they’d just get back up. Today when I see someone bullying another person, I don’t use physical violence; I step in and try to calm both parties down.

I heard about Phoebe Prince, that girl who ended up committing suicide because she was bullied. I think that’s a sad end to her story. If you’re being bullied, never bottle up your feelings; talk to parents, teachers, counselors, anyone who will listen. I didn’t do that. I wish I had because my situations would have been different.

The person being bullied needs to stay strong; don’t let the bully see that his or her actions are affecting you. Eventually the bully will get bored and move on to someone else.

This article was in the Ithaca Journal and is the result of an interview of a 19 year old boy.  I so appreciate the conclusions that he came to that I wanted to share them with you.

“THE number of overweight children is rising, a study has found that obese children under ten are still more likely to be bullied by thinner classmates even if they are popular or smart.”

As parents we must set the example and be aware of our health from all points of view.

15 May 2010, In many cultures fat is synonymous with good fortune and prosperity. You come from a well endowed home.

Which is fine until your body becomes over endowed and starts spilling over. And you are not yet ten. Regrettably, the odds of children growing out of it are slim, if one can play on the word. Parents, in their froth of fondness commit great folly. For years they will endearingly believe that the child, little apple of their eye, is only enjoying puppy fat and it will disappear. Puppy fat has been a good excuse and further compounded by the larger family in which grandparents add to the conspiracy and feed their children’s brood with calories and kindness.

They could not be more unkind. Yet, the awareness level has done little to wake everyone up to this self indulgence and its harmfulness. On the contrary there are more fat children now in wealthy high per capital societies than before. We continue to equate plumpness with success and good breeding.

And if we do not get the fact that we might as well be poisoning our children by the ongoing delusion that they are big boned new research shows that not only are the couch potatoes lazy as drones they also are soft targets.

ALTHOUGH THE number of overweight children is rising, a study has found that obese children under ten are still more likely to be bullied by thinner classmates even if they are popular or smart.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that obese children are picked on more, regardless of gender, race, social skills, or academic achievement.

Dr. Julie C. Lumeng, who led the study, said she found the study slightly surprising and “disturbing.”

“Unlike in the 1980s so many kids are obese now. In some schools, half the class may be overweight … so I really thought that maybe being obese really doesn’t result in being bullied as much anymore. I was wrong,” she told Reuters Health. A quarter of the children reported being bullied, although their mothers said about 45 per cent of them were bullied.

According to the researchers, the odds of being bullied were 63 per cent higher for an obese child compared to a healthy-weight peer.

Children can be cruel and in their minds nicknames like Fatty, Jumbo, Big Martha, Roundy are par for the course and not hurtful.

One amazing fact is Lumeng also thought she’d find protective factors, like having good social skills and doing well in school.

“I thought maybe this would protect obese kids from being bullied. But no matter how we ran and re-ran the analysis, the link between being obese and being bullied remained,” Lumeng said.

“Parents of obese children rate bullying as their top health concern,” Lumeng and her colleagues note in their report published in Pediatrics. Obese children who are bullied also suffer more depression, anxiety and loneliness. “There is no simple solution to the problem,” Lumeng told Reuters Health. “I think it reflects the general prejudice against obese people,” and children, even at a very young age, pick up on this.

The discussion is interesting.  It is such a shame in two ways.  First to try to solve our bullying issues in school without involving everyone in the community and especially parents will never work.  We cannot just send our kids off to someone else and expect them to fix them.  Second to solve bullying with bullying does not suggest anything to the bully except that whoever the bigger bully is WINS!  Not a good example.

Teaching and experiencing empathy, kindness, and helping our kids mature in our world will have a bigger impact on them then just bullying them back.    Now it is up to all of us to take responsibility where we can and step up to setting a good example in all of our dealing with each other and especially our children.

I have just completed studying a course that was originally set up to teach police officers how to deal with all of the tough situations that they have to deal with – without getting into a physical altercations, and to know when it is the time to act in a physical manner.  The course has now been redesigned to be taught to our students.  I am looking forward to sharing this with our community in the weeks and months to come, because I believe there is a time when action needs to be taken, but there is so much that we can do beforehand that we are not teaching our kids to do that could prevent the physical altercation.

One of the observations that really stood out to me was that one parental characteristic that increased the likelihood of child bullying were parents getting angry with their child frequently and feeling that their child often did things to bother them.  This goes back to how it is a domino affect many times.  A boss gets angry with dad, dad comes home and get angry with mom or the kids, the kids get angry with the dog, sibling, or schoolmate and then it just continues.  The anger and frustration becomes bullying.

On the other side though it was found that parents also played a protective role. Those who shared ideas and talked with their child, and those who met most of their child’s friends were less likely to have children who bully.  Keeping those lines of communication open are so important to our children.  For them to know that they have someone that is willing to listen and hear their concerns and stories is a way of teaching and demonstrating empathy, which is key to preventing bullying and victims of bullies.

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“Bullies only speak one language.They are ALWAYS cowards.If you take a stand and leave a couple in a bloody heap,all of a sudden the bullies disappear.I am not a bully and neither are you.I was a big kid,and easy going as well and bullies used to misread this as weakness and then all of a suddern a freight train ran them over……….it was me deciding enough is enough.THEY KNOW ONE LANGUAGE……PICK ON SOMBODY WHO IS SMALLER,WHO IS MEEK,WHO ISN’T AS STRONG ,ETC.Bad character is ALWAYS a bad judge of character.Being polite and not using your size and strength to intimidate IS NOT weakness.Bullies are cured with one,sometimes two treatments.The really stubborn ones need three.They have an entitled and exhaggerated opinion of themselves and they are a HOUSE OF CARDS EVERY TIME.MAKE THEM EAT SOME LAWN GRASS AND A LITTLE GRAVEL TOO.THEY BECOME MAGICALLY POLITE AND RESPECTFUL.”

While this may have worked for this individual, for himself, I can assure him that the persons who were bullying him, “whom he cured with treatments”, simply moved on to a better target.  They did not stop bullying others and in fact most likely became more intense with their next victim.

So what is the answer?  There are no quick fixes.  There is not any sort of magic fairy dust that can be sprinkled on them that changes them.  All of us are involved in training ourselves and our children in the art of empathy, respect, anger management, manners and a host of other civilized conduct.  It is a way of thinking and feeling.  It is not weak but rather the use of simple tools that we can develop and train.

Everyone of our children deserve to see these qualities modeled by their parents, teachers and role models.  They all deserve to be given the tools, words and emotional strength to feel good about themselves and be strong and yet respectful of others.

This is the self defense that I feel is important to teach our children to use on a daily basis.  The more I study this subject, the more I talk about this with parents and students, the more aware I become of my own self.  I encourage everyone of us to look at the subject of anger and the results.  Discuss it with others and practice calming ourselves down.  Follow my blog at Balanced Life Skills for more information about anger management, teen suicide and bullying in the coming months.  Awareness will make a difference in each of us.