Three Cheers for "That Girl in Pink""

When Benni Cinkle was 13, she appeared in a YouTube music video that went viral, receiving over 200 million views.  At first, Benni was ridiculed by millions around the world for her awkward dancing, often referred to as “That girl in pink that can’t dance.”  They called her names and told her she should kill herself. A few of the printable names she was called were “lame, terrible, awkward, horrible, stupid, freak, loser, awful, worthless, annoying, fat and ugly, dumb.”  Other comments included, “She should probably look into suicide,” “Please just die” and “I’ll bet she wants to kill herself now.”

Did she let the jerks drag her down?   Did she lose her self-esteem and get depressed?  Did she commit suicide?

No.  Benni was a target, but she was not a victim!

Instead of reacting defensively, Benni didn’t take it personally.  She kept her spirits up.  She met their criticism with humor, honesty and understanding.  She was open and didn’t hide.  Soon, anonymous cyber bullies became fans and Benni's online reputation as an approachable, down-to-earth teen began to grow.  In the months following her unexpected popularity, Benni received tens of thousands of requests for advice from teens around the world.

Realizing she had been gifted with a platform that offered international reach, Benni decided to use her 15 minutes of fame for something positive. So she:

• Started “That Girl in Pink Foundation” as a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention of teen suicide.  TGIP focuses on any issue that may directly or indirectly lead to teen suicide, including: Teen Depression, Bullying, Cyber-Bullying, Teen Self-Mutilation, Teen Gay/Lesbian Support, Child Violence, Sexual Abuse, Teen Dating Violence, Eating Disorders and Teen Pregnancy.
• Authored “That Girl in Pink’s Internet Survival Guide,” offering teens strategies for handling life online.
• Organized a flashmob dance to raise donations for American Red Cross Japan Earthquake Relief.
• Organized a walk for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation that included hundreds of kids from 14 countries walking with her, virtually.
• Recorded her single, “Can You See Me Now,” and donated profits to TWLOHA and GLSEN.
• Visited schools across the U.S. delivering her “Don’t Just Stand There” anti-bullying presentation.

Let’s hear three cheers for Benni!

Find her at www.thatgirlinpink.org.  Invite her to speak at your school.  She’ll help you stand up to cyber bullies and stop bullying in its many forms.  She’ll inspire students to become defenders instead of remaining merely bystanders.

Positioning Wars can Ruin a Business

Turf wars are a well-known fact of life in many organizations.  Lesser known, but far more destructive, are positioning wars – struggles by two or more opponents for the top spot in an organization. Turf wars aren’t any fun.  But they’re mostly defensive – people trying to protect their turf from encroachment by a real or imagined rival.  Positioning wars are far more aggressive and destructive.  They involve a fight to become No. 1 immediately or, at least, the heir-designate to whoever’s in charge now.

Turf battles often lead to bureaucratic slowdowns.  Positioning wars can ruin the very kingdom being fought over.

To read the rest of this article from the Dallas Business Journal, see: Positioning wars can ruin a business http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/04/30/smallb2.html

Imagine the consequences when two powerful, competent princes, who run different operational units, fight to determine who’ll inherit when the king retires:

• Political in-fighting takes precedence over vision, mission, productivity or clients.  Good staff stops trying to make a productive difference.  Meetings degenerate into skirmishes.  Soap opera flourishes.
• The princes circle each other like birds of prey seeking to uncover hidden agendas. Unofficial power centers are established.  The princes’ teams reflect their antagonism.    They focus on the faults of the other team and the hidden meanings behind looks, words and deeds.  They score trivia points by publicizing the other faction’s setbacks or their own minor victories.
• Innocent bystanders aren’t safe.  Neutral parties are inevitably drawn into choosing sides. Tension and terror activate childhood coping strategies.  Everyone watches their words more carefully than their productivity.
• Bad apples suck up to each prince looking for protection and power.  Slackers try to turn their protector against managers who pressure them to be more productive.
• Previously productive people become double agents or assassins.  Even within teams, suspicion prevents aligned, concerted effort.
• Clients are ignored or entangled in alliances.

Positioning wars are even more debilitating if the princes had previously been able to work together effectively.  Most people don’t adapt effectively to the dramatic change in environment.  They’re blindsided, feel victimized and waste time bemoaning their undeserved fate.

Competition stimulates creative juices and inspires outstanding achievement.  But cut-throat, internal war inevitably scorches the land.  If you’re still the king, act decisively to aminimize destruction from the princes’ fighting.

Positioning wars create the same symptoms. Performance decreases.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level tolerated.  Narcissists, incompetent, lazy, gossip, back-stabbing, manipulation, hostility, crankiness, meeting sabotage, negativity, relentless criticism, whining, complaining, cliques, turf control, toxic feuds, harassment, bullying and abuse thrive.  Power hungry bullies take power.

Don’t waste your valuable people time on slackers.  You won’t make things better being a peacemaker.

Begging, bribery, endless praise, appeasement, endless ‘second chances,’ unconditional love and the Golden Rule usually encourage more harassment, bullying and abuse.  Stop emotional bullies and stop bullying.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  You can learn to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Stop School Bullying: It's a Pattern, not an Incident

Kenneth Weishuhn, a 14-year-old high school sophomore in Paullina, Iowa, died of self-inflicted wounds after months of relentless bullying.  Articles in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post have described the town’s outcry. It’s true; Kenneth tried to minimize the bullying so it didn’t become worse.  And he got some relief when the gang of bullies turned some of its attention on a pregnant student.  And the school did hold an assembly after he reported the bullying.

After his suicide, school officials tried to cover themselves in the usual way.  “Dan Moore, the superintendent of the South O’Brien Community School District, said administrators knew of only one incident regarding Kenneth and that he believes they dealt with it well.  ‘I feel the school did address the issue that they were aware of when it came to their attention,’ Moore said. ‘Obviously, we had no idea that we’d have an end result like this, or what was going on outside of here.’”

There’s much more hidden below the surface of the principal's and Mr. Moore's lack of an effective response; especially the real fault that the administrators are trying to cover up.

Let's understand clearly.  Mr. Moore thinks they addressed the bullying and abuse well because he did some processes, procedures and techniques, even though the harassment and bullying didn't stop and, in fact, got worse.  And Mr. Moore thinks that performing some processes relieve him of responsibility.

What’s hidden here?

1. The school principal, teachers and district administrator put all the responsibility for knowing about bullying on the reports they receive from students.  They take no responsibility for knowing what’s going on under their noses.  Every kid in school knows who the relentless bullies are and who leads the cliques and gangs.  But they don’t tell.
2. The school principal, teachers and district administrator haven’t created an environment, a culture, in which at least some of the many witnesses come forward, instead of remaining as bystanders. Why didn't the witnesses come forward?  They know that nothing serious will happen to the bullies, but they’ll be exposing themselves to retaliation.  They don’t want to become the next victims of bullying.  What was the principal’s "stop school bullying program" at the start of the year, before there were any incidents?  Were parents involved in the program?
3. Despite their years of education, their advanced degrees and their special training on how to stop school bullies, the school principal, teachers and district administrator treated bullying as an “incident,” not as a pattern.  Yet everyone knows that school harassment, bullying and abuse are rarely an isolated incident.  These behaviors may start as an incident perpetrated by one kid instead of by a gang, but when nothing happens to the bully, bullies become bolder and more overt.  When there are still no serious consequences, other bullies join in and bullying becomes a pervasive pattern.  Pretty soon, other kids pile on.  Bullying expands from emotional and physical abuse into cyberbullying – on and off campus.  When relentless bullies get away with their worst behavioral impulses – taunting, teasing, harassment, physical, mental and emotional abuse – other kids let their worst impulses out.

Kids know who has the power.  If the responsible adults turn the other cheek and bury their heads in the sand, kids know that the bullies are in charge.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level.  The culture becomes the "Lord of the Flies" on the playground, in the bathrooms and in the hallways.

When Kenneth Weishuhn reported what was happening, he faced an accomplish-nothing principal and district administrator who weren’t proactive in protecting him but, instead, would excuse and justify themselves by saying that they did the minimum required - even if it didn't work.

Would you want to pay those people’s salaries?  Would you want your child at those schools?  Maybe, but only if your kid was the leader of the bullies.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Best Methods to Stop Bullying in Schools

The principal and teachers at Sheila’s school were proud of their efforts to stop bullies.  They had a team, including a psychologist, to deal fairly with students accused of bullying. They were certain that:

1. Students became bullies because they’d been bullied at home.
2. Bullies had low self-esteem and weren’t aware of other ways of making friends.
3. Bullying was in retaliation for bad treatment and that if provocation decreased, so would bullying.
4. If other students stopped hurting the feelings of bullies, bullying would eventually stop.
5. Since bullying was not the fault of one person, negotiation and mediation, would eventually stop bullying.
6. The best way to stop bullying was through forgiveness, sympathy, compassion, understanding, education and compromise.

These educators were not going to let those poor, damaged kids who’d turned to bullying be harassed, taunted or abused, verbally or emotionally, or through unjust accusations.

What’s wrong with this picture?

For example, when Sheila finally had enough and complained that a clique of mean girls made disparaging remarks about her weight, hair, pimples and un-cool clothes, her teacher asked for proof.  Sheila could only offer her word against the girls who denied being mean to her.

Since there was no proof, and the accused clique was composed of popular girls, Sheila’s teacher told her that she didn’t believe those girls would act so mean and Sheila better watch her false accusations.  The teacher said that Sheila was probably jealous and maybe she should dress better, lose weight, make friends and avoid antagonizing the popular girls.

Sheila’s mother met with the teacher, principal and school psychologist.  They assured her that there was no evidence for Sheila’s accusations.  Then they asked many questions about Sheila’s home life and psychological state.  Maybe Sheila was going through something difficult at home.  Or maybe she was simply jealous and suffering from some teenage turmoil because she didn’t fit in.

They suggested that Sheila try to make friends with the popular girls – be nice to them, ask them what upset them and try to change that, give them friendship offerings, open her heart to them or turn the other cheek if she was misunderstanding what they said to her.  Maybe Sheila was simply too sensitive to the way high school girls naturally were.

They told accused clique of girls that Sheila had complained about them and encouraged them to be nice to her, despite her complaint.

Having been forewarned and directed at Sheila, but having no consequences to make them stop bullying, the accused girls escalated their attacks and got sneakier.  Sheila was subjected to daily barrages of hostility, venom and meanness.  When nothing happened to the clique, they got bolder and eventually beat Sheila up in the bathroom.

Unfortunately for them, a teacher happened to be in one of the stalls and heard the whole scene.

The school officials now initiated their program to stop bullies.

• They investigated to find out what Sheila had done to provoke the attack.
• They told Sheila’s parents to trust them.  They were working on the problem, but because of confidentiality issues, they couldn’t share what they were doing.
• They encouraged Sheila’s parents not to talk with the parents of the clique girls.
• They encouraged Sheila’s parents not to go to the media or to a lawyer.
• They assured Sheila’s parents that the quieter the issue was kept, the more likely there would be a rapid resolution to the situation.

The principal and therapist had Sheila meet with the girls to mediate the situation by themselves.  They told the girls that they thought the students could solve the hostility on their own and that Sheila was willing to compromise with them.

At that meeting, the girls pinched Sheila, punched her, pulled her hair and threatened her with worse after school.  Then they told the principal and therapist that they’d apologized and promised not to do anything if Sheila would treat them nicer, but that Sheila had called them names, insulted them and refused to compromise.

Over the next six months, the attacks on Sheila increased, and the principal and his staff kept trying to educate the bullies.  Subjected to repeated teasing, taunting, harassment and physical abuse during this time, Sheila’s inner demons emerged, she gained more weight, became morose and depressed, and often had suicidal thoughts.  Her confidence, self-esteem and grades plummeted.  She even went through a period of guilt, thinking that the way the girls treated her was, indeed, her fault.

It took a lot to overcome her sense of despair and defeat, activate her fighting spirit and help her recover a sense of purpose, determination and hope.

By the way, the truth of Sheila’s accusations was later verified because one of her narcissistic persecutors had proudly used her phone to record most of the attacks.

There were many early warning signs that could have alerted Sheila’s parents that school officials would do nothing to stop the bullying. There were:

• No school-wide program including parents to stop bullies.
• No training for teachers, administrators and other personnel (janitors and bus drivers) to recognize the early warning signs of overt, covert, verbal, emotional, physical and cyberbullying.
• No effort to monitor areas of the school where most bullying occurs.
• No proactive effort on the principal or teacher’s parts to look for bullying.
• No effort to gather proof before it dropped unexpectedly into their laps.
• No effort to keep Sheila’s complaint confidential.

I could say a lot about specific steps that the principal, teachers and therapist could and should have taken to protect Sheila.  But they were the kind of do-nothing administrators who eventually make the headlines.

However, for this article let’s focus on the assumptions these educators had that assured that they wouldn’t consider protecting Sheila effectively.

1. There are the ones listed at the beginning of this article.
2. These supposedly responsible authorities cared more about understanding, educating and forgiving the bullies than about protecting their target or about creating a safe environment at their school.
3. They thought that the feelings and confidentiality of the bullies were more important than Sheila’s pain.
4. They were willing to sacrifice Sheila for the sake of education and therapy on the bullies.

Almost every student at the school knew what was happening and recognized the accepted culture of bullying.  That’s why there were no witnesses; the students knew better than to risk their necks when they wouldn’t be protected by the adults.

As is usually the case, in a school in which bullies are not stopped, Sheila’s treatment was not an isolated case.  When Sheila’s parents made her situation public, many other parents came forward with reports of how their children had been bullied by other students and how the administrators had not protected them.  Even after many other cases surfaced, the principal and his staff maintained the same approach.

Only the results of extensive media publicity, a court case and the intervention of a district administrator changed the situation.  Actually, more publicity resulted in a faster resolution of the situation.

Obviously, I don’t think that education, compassion and therapy are the best methods of stopping bullying.  The best method is to stop the behavior:

1. Create an atmosphere in which bullying is not tolerated.
2. Remove bullies.
3. Protect targets; don’t convert them into victims.
4. Encourage witness to come forward, not to become bystanders.

Then we’ll see which bullies respond to education, compassion and therapy.

I won’t sacrifice the targets for the sake of the bullies.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

To Stop Bullies, Should Kids Ever Fight Back?

Jane’s 5 year-old daughter, Jenny, had been tormented for months by a bully in her class.  Even though the bullying girl was the same size as Jenny, she repeated took whatever Jenny was playing with, shoved Jenny down repeatedly and often pulled her clothes and hair. Jane had told her daughter that physical violence was never the answer.  Jenny should never sink to a bully’s level.  Also, the incidents were no big deal, the bully was probably bullied at home and didn’t know any better, Jenny should rise above and be the better and nicer person, Jenny should try to play nicely with the bully and make friends with her by giving the bully her toys, and to tell her teacher when incidents occurred.

The teacher talked to the bully but never stopped her behavior.

Eventually, one day, the bully grabbed a toy from Jenny and scratched her face.  In a fit of anger Jenny pushed the bully down and scratched her face really hard.  The bully backed away and cried.  The teacher was outraged at Jenny’s retaliation, sent her to the principal’s office and had Jane called.

What should Jane do?

First, what Jane did was to be very apologetic to the principal and teacher on Jenny’s behalf and then verbally chastise her daughter in the principal’s office for fighting back.  Fortunately for Jenny:

• Her mother did not make Jenny apologize face-to-face to the bully and the teacher was so busy and distracted that she forgot to punish Jenny in front of the bully.
• She felt so good after fighting back and winning that she ignored her mother’s attempts to lash her with shame, blame and guilt.  When she went back into class she gave the bully a dirty look and smiled threateningly at her.  That was Jenny taking her own power instead of waiting for someone to empower her.

Jane illustrates how well-meaning parents can be the number one risk factor in converting targets into victims.

What would I recommend Jane do instead?  Should kids like Jenny ever fight back?

• Jane should direct her anger at the teacher and principal who hadn’t protected her daughter from a bully.  Actually she should have been doing that all along, not simply after this incident.  She should have made repeated complaints, in writing, up the chain of responsibility of the school district.  Schools can create effective stop-bullying programs.
• She should have found out if other kids were being bullied at the school.  She should have rallied those parents, contacted lawyers and gotten the media involved in publicizing the do-nothing principals and district administrators who are a major factor in bullying-caused suicides.
• If I were Jenny’s parent, I’d take her out for ice cream or an even bigger treat.  I’d congratulate her on successfully defending herself.  I’d tell her that she’s probably going to have to hurt the bully once more because many bullies are boundary pushers.  The bully will probably try her old tactics once more to test Jenny’s courage, determination and resolve.
• I’d tell her that as she grows older, I’ll teach her how to fight back verbally and that if she learns verbal martial arts, she may not ever have to use physical methods.  But I’d see that she learns these also.
• I’d also tell her that her teacher and principal are cowards and jerks.  They don’t protect targets from predators under their care.  A 5 year-old can understand that.  So Jenny should just be quiet and nod when they lecture her, and she should ignore what they say.  If niceness doesn’t stop bullies, then Jenny should get me involved and if the authorities won’t protect her, she must use force.

When harassment, bullying and abuse are tolerated they don’t remain isolated incidents.  Instead, bullying rapidly becomes a generally accepted pattern at a school or a district.  When adults don’t fulfill their responsibilities, bullies realize they have the power to do whatever they want.  Other kids get lured into bullying or become bystanders instead of witnesses.  Behavior settles to the lowest common denominator.

Begging, bribery, appeasement, understanding, forgiveness, wishful thinking and the Golden Rule don’t stop bullies.  Unconditional love of bullies doesn’t stop their behavior.  Relentless bullies are predators.  Kindness doesn’t stop them; they misinterpret our kindness as weakness and an invitation to harm us more.

I’ve been interviewed many times on radio and television programs.  Almost every woman who has interviewed me was a Jenny whose mother told her to take the high road and never fight back, verbally or physically.  But unlike Jenny, they grew up being “nice girls.” Now, they wallow in negative second-guessing and self-doubt, and a little depression and defeatism because they never learned how to protect themselves.  Now, they bear some anger toward their mothers.

They’re also unable to stop bullies at work or to teach their children how to stop bullies in school.

But they’re all eager to learn how to stop bullies and how to make school officials protect their children, whether they want to or not.

For some examples, see the case studies in “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” the companion book to “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Do Our Teenagers Have a Right to Privacy?

I attended a wonderful presentation on cyberbullying and sexting by an officer from a local police department.  The question came up about spying on our teenagers’ phones and computers: “Do our teenagers have a right to privacy?”  That was followed by the question: “If we spy on our teens, how can they consider us friends?  They’ll never open up to us.  Won’t that thwart our efforts?” Let’s distinguish between two types of threats to our teenagers:

1. Adult predators who lure them and groom them – whether to exploit them or to gain personal, family information to use against their parents.
2. Other teens who will slam them, cyberbully them and share sexted pictures.

Although most parents worry about the first situation, most kids worry about the second or will blow it off as “Drama.”  But the answer is the same in either case.

My answers to the big questions about privacy are essentially the same as that officer’s:

• Teenagers have no privacy.  I want us to know what our kids are doing so we can help them.  We’ve been there and done that and have more wisdom, even though they don’t think so.  If we don’t have wisdom, we should make learning a first priority.
• As long as they’re dependent on us and we’re responsible for them, we must know.  They may be more technically savvy but we can learn enough.  That’s what our friends are for.
• There are values more important than that they like us.  Some of these are that we protect them (even from themselves) as best we can and that they know there are limitations and boundaries they must obey.  Of course, I hope they understand.  But even if they don’t understand – especially when they think it’s not fair or they can take care of themselves – those are the “house rules.”

We hope that much of this can be preventative.  Wouldn’t we like to stop our daughter before she sends a nude photo to a boyfriend?  We can say, “How many of your friends’ parents are still with the boyfriends they loved forever way back in middle and high school?”  How many of your friends’ parents were viciously attacked by their ex’s when they broke up?  How many of your friends’ parents were harassed, taunted, bullied, abused and mobbed by people they used to be friends with?

Wouldn’t we like to know if our kids are being pressured to be bystanders instead of witnesses? Or if they know there’s mobbing and they’re being tempted or pressured to pile on?

In addition, of course, we can be alert to the first signs of cyberbullying.  Have they withdrawn or stopped eating, being with friends, or wanting to go to school?  Have they become emotionally labile (mood swings, happy, crying, excited, depressed, angry, hysterical all in 10 seconds)?  Do they engage in negative self-talk and put-downs?  Do they lack self-confidence and self-esteem?  Are they changing everything in order to get friends or please boy or girlfriends?  Are they anxious, stressed, not sleeping?

When they accuse us of not trusting them, we already know the answers:

• It’s not about trust; it’s about experience, wisdom and safety.
• They’ve hidden, lied and deceived us before and will do so again.  Of course we don’t trust them, just like our parents shouldn’t have trusted us.
• It’s about which risks we’ll allow them to take and which we won’t.

When they insist that they’re old enough to make their own decisions, we also know the answer to that: “When you’re capable of supporting yourself and living independently, then you’re old enough to be responsible for yourself.

As for their opening up because we’re their friends; how many of us opened up to our parents – or would have if they tried to be our friends?  We thought we could or had to solve things on our own or we knew better than to open up.

Whether we physically check phone and computer logs or we also use spyware, we must take the initiative.  If they don’t like it, they don’t need a phone.  Also, we should take steps to find out about their friends and what their friends’ parents allow or encourage.

Unfortunately, too many examples can be found in the headlines of what happen when parents don’t know what their teens are doing.

I’m not suggesting we become the thought-police or “Big Brother.”  There’s no need to go overboard.

How many cyberbullying-caused suicides does it take before we start acting like responsible parents and ferret out what’s going on?  We can’t force reluctant principals to act unless we know what’s going on.  We can’t get law enforcement to act unless we know what’s going on.

You might also check the Verizon cyberbullying site for more information: Verizon Expert Panel, #1, “Understanding and Preventing Cyberbullying:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeXCT8I4uFU&feature=relmfu

Verizon Expert Panel, #2, “When does rude cross the line, online:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzuguaf-hlU&feature=channel_video_title

Verizon Expert Panel, #3, “Is your child being cyberbullied?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZKNgh3_ZjA&feature=relmfu

Expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Stop Workplace Bullies who Beat you up with the Rules

We all recognize bullies who yell, hit and make nasty remarks.  But how do you stop bullies who use the letter of the rules to gain power by browbeating co-workers and getting them in trouble? For example, in the last two years, Jane had lodged written complaints about numerous employees who’d broken rules.  The result: people looking over their shoulders, fearful and anxious, irritable and attacking each other.  In addition, low productivity, lots of sick leave and high turnover.

To read the rest of this article from The Orlando Business Journal, see: Stop workplace bullies who beat you up with the rules http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/print-edition/2011/04/15/stop-workplace-bullies-who-beat-you-up.html

Learn what manager Joe did legally to undercut Jane’s bullying and power, encourage bystanders to come forward as witnesses, change the culture of his team and eliminate the high cost of low attitudes. All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Colorado Needs Consistent Anti-Bullying Programs

We all remember: Colorado was home to the Columbine High School shootings in 1999.  But as Jessica Fender reports in the Denver Post, “More Consistent Anti-Bullying Program Urged for Colorado,” after 11 years “good intentions have devolved into an uncoordinated approach that ignores best practices in some instances and leaves state authorities with no clear picture of how well the myriad policies work.” As, “Susan Payne, [who] directs the state's Safe2Tell effort, [says,] ‘One of our issues is there is no consistency.  While each school has to have a bullying policy, their policy is unique to their school.’”

They’re right, but laws and policies are only the first of a number of necessary steps.

Instead of thinking about which component is the most important, let’s look at what’s necessary in a different way.  Think of what we need to stop school bullying as if you were imagining a target with a bull’s eye in the center.  Everything in the bull’s eye is necessary.  If you leave out one of the elements in the bull’s eye, you won’t be successful.

So what’s in that core bull’s eye?

1. Effective, well-written laws to specify what’s illegal; that is, what’s bullying.  Without these laws, people like Lori Drew, the mother who set-up the Facebook page and led the attack that caused teenager Megan Meier to commit suicide, can get away with that behavior.  Or the kids who tormented Phoebe Prince, Asher Brown, Jon Carmichael, Ty Smalley, Jaheem Herrera, Brandon Bitner, Samantha Kelly, Billy Lucas, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and so many others in 2010 until they committed suicide, will also get away with it.  Don’t limit the laws to include only protected categories of victims based on race, sex, religion, sexual preference, etc.  Be inclusive about the abuse, no matter who it’s directed against.  Maybe the phrase about protected categories should be, “…including but not limited to…”  Laws should contain provisions against verbal bullying and cyberbullying, as well as physical violence and abuse.
2. Require all schools to have policies.  Make principals, staff, school district administrators and school boards legally responsible for stopping bullying in their schools.  This way, reluctant, lazy, uncaring principals will be forced to act or face criminal and civil penalties for their failure to protect targets of bullying who are in their care.  Also, responsible officials and administrators will have legal support for taking effective action to discipline bullies in the face of bullying or uncaring parents who would sue them for disciplining their bullying children.
3. Require all schools to have programs designed to stop bullies.  These programs should contain a sequence of swift and firm steps to remove bullies from schools and school activities like sports.  The steps should focus on protecting targets first, and rehabilitating bullies only after they’re removed.  Effective anti-bullying programs also educate bystanders to become witnesses.  That requires spelling out what witnesses should say and do, who they should report to and how principals and teachers will keep them anonymous and protect them.  Effective programs also include close contact with police, especially in cases of cyberbullying and physical abuse.
4. Require training for everyone involved with school children, including bus drivers and cafeteria monitors.  Increase recognition of the more subtle but very pernicious forms of verbal and emotional bullying.  Increase awareness of the difference between episodic arguments and even fights between kids versus destructive patterns of taunting, harassment and physical bullying.  Give all staff specific steps to follow in documenting and reporting bullying.

Colorado’s Safe2Tell program is a wonderful effort to help kids come forward anonymously and to bring legal pressure to bear on bullies, their parents and school officials who need to act.

Of course, laws, policies, programs and training are merely the necessary guidelines on paper.  What makes them effective are dedicated people who are concerned and courageous enough to stop bullying.

Consulting and coaching within individual districts and schools does produce effective programs, stimulates the leadership of strong principals and energizes the support of good teachers and staff.  In addition, there is a natural weeding out of people who choose not to act effectively and shouldn’t be put in positions of responsibility for children’s welfare and education.  Effective programs develop and highlight models of great adults acting on behalf of children.

We don’t need to wait until there are more studies about why bullies bully.  We don’t need to wait until we have more studies to define all the consequences of bullying that turns targets into victims.  We don’t need to wait until we can write perfect laws, policies and programs.

We know enough about the stress, anxiety, depression, self-hatred, negativity, and loss of self-confidence and self-esteem, to know that the effects of being a victim can be life-long.  Just as successful school bullies tend to become bullies as spouses and parents, and bullies at work, so victims of school bullies tend to become victims as spouses and parents, and at work.

We know enough to act now to stop bullies.  We do need to act before more lives are ruined while we analyze, debate and vacillate.  I’d rather err on the side of protecting targets at the risk of being to harsh on a kid that wasn’t really a relentless bully, than the present situation that errs on the side of protecting bullies and leaves targeted children isolated, unprotected, helpless and thinking that suicide is the only way to end the abuse and pain.

Expert coaching of kids and families helps them become strong and skilled enough to resist being targeted by bullies and to stop the bullies in their tracks.  These children do not become victims of bullying.  And their parents learn how to make school administrators, principals and teachers do their duties, even if they’re reluctant.

Stop School Bullies: Use Laws, People, Programs

In their article in the New York Times, “There’s Only One Way to Stop a Bully,” Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom focus on the educational aspects of programs designed to stop school bullying.  Let’s look at the whole picture and especially at the piece that’s usually missing from ineffective school programs:

• Laws: Over 40 states have passed laws to specify school bullying behaviors and to make them illegal.  That’s a necessary step.  Good laws give legal leverage to principals, school district administrators and teachers who try to stop school bullies.  Good laws can also force reluctant school principals to implement and enforce effective programs to protect the targets of bullies.
• Programs: Laws, by themselves, will not stop bullying.  Also, expensive, off-the-shell anti-bullying programs won’t stop bullies as long as the programs remain in their binders and are used merely as window dressing to show the appearance of compliance.  Furthermore, programs that are focused on rehabilitating or therapeutizing bullies are ineffective.  Since the only consequence for bullies in these programs is lengthy lectures, they have no reason to change their behavior and they victimize their targets more brutally.  Real bullies are adept at manipulating the system and do-gooders who run it.  Effective programs are designed for specific schools and school districts by participation between a consultant, principal and teachers that broaden to include staff, parents and students.

• Effective Programs: The motivating force behind these programs is proactive, responsible adults who don’t wait until a flagrant case is brought to them or they are surprised by a suicide.  Effective programs educate teachers and all staff to observe, intervene and report bullying situations.  These programs educate all staff, children and parents about behavior that’s acceptable, how that behavior will be rewarded and how to stop behavior that absolutely won’t be tolerated.

Effective programs have clear procedures and consequences at every step of the way.  Ineffective programs move much too slowly; they protect the rights of bullies to have a lengthy process of rehabilitation while they give bullies continued access to their targets.  Effective programs begin with protecting the victims; they move swiftly to remove bullies even if that interferes with the bully’s educational opportunities.  These programs begin the first day of school and are reinforced weekly.

• People: Everyone must be involved in backing an effective program.  Irresponsible adults pretend that they don’t know who the bullies are or where it occurs or they think that the Golden Rule will change the hearts of real bullies.  Responsible adults will have a strong commitment to making their environment safe.  The children must be taught what is expected of them and how to respond if they’re bullied or if they witness bullying.  Kids must also have a way of finding help with temporary urges to act like a bully.

A critical group is parents.  Principals need core groups of parents to support efforts to stop bullies, despite threats from bullying parents.  Also, parents can lead the efforts to communicate and to set the tone of acceptable behavior with other parents.  Vigilance and involvement are necessary to maintain the standards.

• How to recognize real bullies.  If you think of all students as fitting on some version of a Bell curve, you’ll see that some kids won’t ever bully while most are in the middle group – they’ll accept the prevailing tone and behave in ways that are praised or tolerated.  That’s where education and a tone of no-bullying can influence their behavior.

But no matter how much they are indoctrinated, they’ll try bullying when they’re having a bad day or a bad year in their personal lives.  If they’re not stopped, they’ll be encouraged to continue and they’ll even act worse.  If cliques get formed to pick on scapegoats, these middle-ground kids will be tempted to join or at least to look the other way.  If the individuals in the cliques are stopped and punished, kids in that middle group will tend to remove themselves from the cliques and to fit into the prevailing tone of civilized behavior.

None of the kids in those two groups are what I call real bullies.  Real bullies are at the end of the curve.  They come into school with bullying as their main tactic to get what they want and to assert themselves.  They are predators who won’t change because of lectures and indoctrination.  They must be stopped or they’ll set the tone of acceptable behavior and draw other kids into bullying and abuse.

• The missing and critical elements: Stop bullies; remove them; deal with their bullying parents.  The “one way” Engel and Sandstrom focus on, like most experts in this field, is to educate bullies and encourage other students to befriend and involve the bullies in inclusive activities.  They stress expressions like “be good to one another,” “be kind,” “cooperate,” “relationship,” “friendship” and “bullies require our help more than punishment.  These are important for everyone to hear and they can set the tone for the kids in the first two groups but they’re not enough to stop real-world bullies.

The missing elements that are critical to stop predators are swift and firm responses of adults to remove and isolate bullies, and to let parents of bullies know what is going on and what behavior will not be tolerated.  Principals, teachers and staff set the tone by their actions, not their words.  They show what behavior will be accepted and what won’t.  Too often, principals won’t be straight forward, clear and firm with the parents of bullies.  Too often, principals take the path of least resistance because they’re afraid of bullying parents who threaten law suits.

Good programs also teach children how to “defend” and “stand up” for each other.  Good programs make children feel safe in becoming active witnesses instead of remaining passive bystanders or reluctant collaborators.

Stopping bullies is the first and necessary step to gain leverage to teach bullies that their old tactics won’t get them what they want.  It’s more important than knowing if bullies are seeking love or power, or have low self-esteem, or simply don’t know better.  When bullies discover that their old tactics no longer work, they’re more willing to learn new tactics to make their way in the world.

Real bullies are very strategic in their behavior; they harass, bully and abuse kids who the other kids won’t protect.  Or, like little scientists, they’ll bully a kid once and keep score of that kid’s response.  If the targeted kid is ineffective in stopping a bully, bullies will take that as an invitation to do whatever they want with impunity.  They’ll continue to increase the frequency and severity of the abuse until they’re stopped.

All kids know whether the adults will protect them or if they’re on their own in a jungle in which power, not right, rules.  Just as all students know who the bullies are and what areas of school are unsafe, examples of the consequences meted out to bullies will spread instantly.

Stop School Bullies or They'll Ruin Summer Vacations

Where do school bullies go during summer vacation?  Do you think they take the summer off and stop bullying until September? School bullies enjoy the summer.  Usually there are fewer adult supervisors at camps, recreation centers, pools, playgrounds or in the mall to stop their bullying.

Bullying is often, but not always, by older kids against younger kids and by bigger kids against smaller kids.  Bullying can be physical, relational and verbal, and it’s always emotional.  Mean girls are adept at gossip, put-downs and exclusion.  Boys use relational and verbal abuse just as much as girls do.  Boy bullies are masters of put-downs, excluding and leading malevolent gangs. Check out summer camps and organized activities where the same kids go for an extended period of time.  Usually the staff at summer camps and recreation centers is too busy and too swamped to stop school bullies on vacation.  Often, staff tolerates or condones bullying.  You’ll hear them say, “That’s just kid stuff.  It’s a rite of passage.  Kids need to learn to deal with bullying by themselves.”  Oh, some staff might lecture or yell if they observe bullying and they care, but their attention will be drawn away by other concerns and the target will be left unprotected.  There won’t be enough consistent oversight and you won’t know what’s going on.

Find out ahead of time if staff is trained to detect and stop bullies.  Do they have a policy and training program?  What specific behaviors are staff trained to observe?  Have they ever sent a bully home?  Do they train the kids how to witness and standup for each other.  What’s the refund policy if you pull your children out because they’re being bullied?  Express your concerns in writing so there’s a record.

Prepare your children to tell you what’s going on.  Being a target of bullying is not their fault.  Not defending themselves or not getting help will create long-lasting problems for them.  Telling is not tattling.  Convince them that the bullying will get worse if they don’t tell you.

If they’re sleeping over, have them send letters home, not postcards.  Is there an increase in anxiety, stress and nightmares?  Are they suddenly uncommunicative?

If your children are in a day activity, stay and observe it.

If there’s an incident or you’re suspicious, talk to the counselor, teacher and head of the organization in person or by phone.  Follow up in writing.  Don’t be put off by promises and platitudes.  What concrete actions have they taken?  A chat or lecture is not an action that will stop a real-world bully.  Don’t accept, “Ignore it and it’ll stop.”  Do bullies still have unsupervised access to your children after a lecture?  The Golden Rule doesn't stop real-world bullies.

If you hear the administrators say that they’re trying to build the bullies’ self-esteem or increase their empathy, or if they think that the bully will benefit from therapy or counseling while they’re still at the activity or camp, or if they appeal to your understanding and sympathy for how difficult the bully’s life is get your children out of that place immediately.  They’re more concerned with the bully than the victim.  They’ll sacrifice your children in order to help the bully. Check out supervised areas like pools and water parks where your children go but where there can be different kids each day.  You have much less control here.  Usually staff is focused on physical safety.  You may have to go a number of times despite your children’s protests.  You’ll probably have to analyze the situation and train them how to escape bullies and get help.  Help them identify lifeguards who will protect them.  Teach them how to elicit those lifeguards’ help.

Check out unsupervised areas like parks and malls where your children hang out.  Are you afraid of the other kids who hang out there?  Do your children know how to get a police officer and what to say to get that officer on their side?  Are you available in emergencies? Make sure your children go with a larger group of friends.  Let them go only if you trust the group to stay together and protect each other.  Of course, your children think that the most important thing in their lives is being accepted by their friends or the crowd they want to be liked by.  But that’s not your primary concern.  First and foremost, you’re not your children’s friend; you’re their protector and your better judgment counts.

Let them earn the privilege of going places without you in a step-wise way.  When they’ve proven to you that they know how to stop bullies or to escape in a fairly safe situation, then and only then, give them a little more freedom that’s age-appropriate.  Encourage them to make those steps, but don’t give in to nagging.  Whining and complaining aren’t evidence of good decision-making.

Bystanders-observers-witnesses can make all the difference in protecting targets.  Teach your kids how to enlist help.  Teach them to be brave.

This article does not include bullying of kids by counselors and staff, or the bullying of weak counselors by a gang of kids.  But you must be aware of the possibilities.

Remember, despite the lack of action by so many principals, teachers and staff during the school year, it’s still more dangerous during the summer.  Be careful out there.

Bill Cosby Lashes Phoebe Prince's Bullies, Principal, Teachers

Bill Cosby is right. On a special anti-bullying segment on Larry King Live, Cosby lashed out at the bullies who tormented Phoebe Prince for months before she committed suicide.  He also took on the teachers, principal and school administrators who said that they didn’t know what was going on.

For months, Prince was assaulted, pushed and shoved, called a “slut” and a “whore” and even had soft drink cans thrown at her – all in school.

The eight students involved are all being prosecuted.  Already two students have been expelled from the school and other students will face felony charges in connection with their actions against Prince.

Among the charges against the teens are statutory rape, violation of civil rights, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.  Prosecutors accuse the students of tormenting Prince “relentlessly” online and in school, often in plain sight of school administrators, right up until the day Prince hanged herself.

On the day Phoebe Prince took her life, one of the bullies wrote the word “accomplished” on Phoebe’s Facebook page.

I also agree with parent Luke Gelinas, who says superintendent Gus A. Sayer, principal Daniel Smith and school committee chairman Edward J. Boisselle should go.

Of course, many failing principals, teachers and administrators hide behind the phrase, “We didn’t know.”  That shows why the most important thing you can do as a parent is often to document your contact with those supposedly responsible adults who actually won’t help you or your child.

Then they’ll hide behind the same plea that was given by the mother of one of the accused bullies, another girl, “Prince was not fully innocent and they’re teenagers.  They call names.”

Can you imagine if principal Smith, standing with the teachers, superintendent Sayer and school committee chairman Boisselle before the assembled parents of South Hadley High School in Massachusetts back in August had said:

• We’ll ignore this whole problem of bullying despite many studies showing that:

• At least 50 percent of high school students are bullied and over 75 percent of the kids in school know who the bullies are.
• When the first incidents of bullying aren’t punished, the number of bullies and bullying incidents grow hugely, and the severity of bullying increases tremendously.
• When we allow harassment, bullying and abuse the victims who are left unprotected by the responsible adults suffer from increased anxiety, stress, shame and depression, and low self-confidence and self-esteem for life.
• Bystanders and witnesses who don’t come forward or who aren’t supported by the authorities suffer from guilt and shame their whole lives.
• Bullies who get away with bullying in youth tend to become relentless adult bullies as adults, in their personal lives and at work.

• We’ll also ignore the many suicides that have occurred because of bullying in middle schools and high schools.
• We won’t have school policies that prohibit bullying or a program that trains us to recognize bullying in the school.  We won’t patrol the classrooms, hallways, bathrooms or cafeteria to see if bullying is occurring.  We won’t work with the police to do anything to the bullies.  When incidents occur we’ll say later that we weren’t responsible because we didn’t know.
• We won’t involve students in recognizing and reporting bullying to us.  If we accidently hear about any bullying, we’ll minimize it and pretend its just “kid stuff.”  If you tell us about your child being bullied, we’ll tell you that we’re too busy to do anything about it and we don’t want to violate the rights of the bullies.
• The bullies in our school are really good kids with anger and self-esteem issues of their own.  They just haven’t had good enough parenting.  That excuses their behavior.  We have to be more sympathetic toward them than toward their targets.

And imagine him finishing with, “Now, parents, we’d like you to hire us, vote for us and pay increased taxes to support your local school and its staff.  We’re going to be your top executives but we won’t know what’s going on.”  Do you imagine the parents at South Hadley High School leaping to their feet with wild applause because they thought that their children would be protected in the next academic year?

I think the lazy, uncaring cowards that are now finding justifications and asking us to excuse their behavior deserve the strongest consequences.

Of course I start with the bullies themselves and their parents, who turned a blind eye and will now protect their little darlings.  They’ll blame Phoebe Prince for being a weakling.  As if they think that what the teenagers did was okay and Phoebe should have taken it like a good victim because it was her fault.

I also say the same about the supposedly responsible adults at school who failed in their primary responsibility; creating a safe environment in which character and values are modeled by adults and in which academic learning can be maximized.

We do know what to do to easily stop 75-90 percent of school bullying.  Are you holding your school administrators and legislators accountable for doing their share?

If you’re a parent of a teenager, do you know what to do to teach your child to be as bully-proof as possible and to hold your principal and staff accountable?

Moments of Choice from Captain Chesley Sullenberger's Childhood

My last post focused on children, teenagers and adults facing moments of choice when they’re targets of or bystanders-witnesses to harassment, bullying and abuse.  People who repeatedly turn away from that call to step up usually develop terrible long-term consequences including increased stress, insecurity, discouragement and depression; increased blame, shame, guilt and negative self-talk; and loss of self-confidence and self-esteem. The valor of Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger focuses us on a different but just as critical a set of choices our kids and teens face as they grow up.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Jeffrey Zaslow, co-author, with Captain Sullenberger, of his book, "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters," Captain Sullenberger faced a number of difficult situations when he was growing up.  He responded to these moments with powerful choices that led him to be prepared to act effectively in the moment when both engines of his Airbus A320 on US Airways flight 1549 went out and he ditched the plane safely in the Hudson River.

Sullenberger’s choices did not begin when danger was thrust on him; they began when he prepared himself for the dangers of real-life, long before he developed his flying skills.

His youthful choices led him to develop the character and skill he needed when a moment of truth was thrust upon him and lives were at stake.  Some of the choices he made long before he captained that flight:

1. Act when someone is helpless in the face of danger.  For example, when he was 13 he watched the news about Kitty Genovese, a New York woman who was stabbed to death while her neighbors ignored her screams and didn’t even act to call the police.  Sullenberger decided then “that if I was ever in a situation where someone such as Kitty Genovese needed my help, I would choose to act.  No one in danger would be abandoned.  As they’d say in the Navy: ‘Not on my watch.’”
2. Work hard to protect people’s lives; don’t be a bystander.  Sully says that after his “father killed himself in 1995, ‘His death had an effect on how I view the world.  I am willing to work hard to protect people’s lives, not to be a bystander, in part because I couldn’t save my father.’”
3. Accept what’s happening and work to better the situation.  After their struggles with [his wife’s] infertility and the arduous journey of trying to become adoptive parents, Sully says, “The challenges [we] faced made me better able to accept the cards I’ve been dealt.”
4. Be prepared.  Study how things can go wrong and plan ahead to overcome potential problems.  In order to see what went wrong and to figure out what to do better, he examined many plane wrecks in person and read many transcripts of cockpit vice recorders taken just before crashes.  The lessons he chose to learn: “Be vigilant and alert.”  He saw that Charles Lindbergh’s “success was due almost entirely to preparation, not luck.”
5. Develop the right mindset.  He says, "In so many areas of life, you need to be a long-term optimist but a short-term realist… You have to know what you know and don't know, and what your airplane can and can't do in every situation."
6. Sacrifice lower priority goals for more important ones.  "By attempting a water landing," he says, "I would sacrifice the 'airplane goal'—trying not to destroy an aircraft valued at $60 million—for the goal of saving lives."
7. Compartmentalize.  Focus on the immediate task; don’t be distracted by extraneous thoughts.  “Sully says his family did not come into his head. ‘That was for the best. It was vital that I be focused; that I allow myself no distractions. My consciousness existed solely to control the flight path.’”

Captain Sullenberger is justly praised for what he did as an adult on the day he saved 155 lives.  And I see a hero in the 13 year-old boy who started and continued to make wonderful choices in response to the difficult situations he faced; preparing himself for the moment when the duty to respond was thrust on him 40 years later.

We never know how many lives will be on the line when our call to action comes; we must develop the will and also the skill so that we can respond effectively.  We must also prepare our children to recognize and respond successfully when their calls to higher duty come.  Facing bullies or witnessing bullying is only one of those situations.

Stop Bullying: Bystanders/Witnesses' Moments of Choice

There are moments of choice in all our lives when we are called upon to stand up for our best dreams and aspirations.  Sometimes we recognize and seize these opportunities, sometimes we ignore these moments and sometimes we don’t ever hear their call to our spirits.  Each of these moments and our responses create long-lasting effects on our self-confidence and self-esteem; on our vision of the futures we want and on the dedication and determination with which we pursue our dreams. Obviously, being subjected to harassment, bullying and abuse, or giving in to the temptation to bully helpless people creates these critical moments.  And being a bystander or a witness to bullying and abuse is also one of these moments that calls out to our spirits.  Will we step up and defend what we know to be right?  Are we cowards or lazy?  Do we know what to do?  Are we skilled?

There are major long term effects on kids who are bystanders and look away or don’t know how to act effectively or who aren’t supported in their actions by responsible adults.  New studies are beginning to provide public evidence, but from our own experiences we all know what the results of those studies will be.

When we see a wrong being done, often repeatedly, and when we don’t act or when no one else acts to right that wrong, we are deeply affected.  When we don’t know what to do to stop the wrong our helplessness increases.  When the adults and other students don’t act to protect targets of abuse, our own vulnerability and insecurity increases tremendously.  Our guilt for our inaction tries to goad us to do better next time.

When we’re children, we try to make sense of the world.  When we see actions that don’t make sense or that seem evil, we are thrown into confusion and fear.  Naturally, we want our world to be reasonable and controllable.  And we want to be protected by the responsible adults – principals, teachers, parents.  When evil triumphs or wrong goes unpunished, the world becomes bleak and too many kids lose confidence in their own efforts and chances of success; we can get insecure, stressed, unassertive, discouraged and depressed, and we can give up.  And we also carry a great burden of guilt, shame and negative self-talk.

Since 60-70% of school children witness bullying, the scars on a significant percent of the population can be staggering.

One of our tasks as parents is to prepare our children and teenagers for these critical situations.  We must give our kids and teens age-appropriate guidance about their options: When and how to intervene by themselves, or to get principals, teachers and school staff involved, or to get us parents involved.

A second task for parents is to plan ahead; ally with like-minded, proactive parents to make sure that your:

• State legislators pass effective laws to stop bullying.
• School district administrators and your children’s school officials create policies and an effective program to stop bullies.
• Principal, teachers and staff are courageous and skilled in enforcing that program.

A key factor in every successful program is that bystanders-witnesses are rallied to support bullied targets, have been trained to be skillful in their actions and are backed by principals, teachers and staff.

Opportunities, moments of choice are precious and critical in every child’s development.  Every call we spurn becomes a burden that weighs us down.  The scars left by inaction when facing wrong or evil can last a lifetime and can diminish our lives.  They always remain to call us to do better next time.

As Pat Tillman’s father said about his son answering such a call, “You only get a few chances in life to show your stuff.  Often it’s a split second when you step up or you don’t.  If you don’t step up and you should have, that eats away at a young man.  And I don’t think it goes away when he gets older.”  The same goes for a young woman.

If Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus can be bullied, how can your daughter stop school bullies?

As reported in the Huffington Post, to focus attention on National Bullying Prevention Awareness Week, Disney star Demi Lovato has gone public.  She was bullied so much in school that she and her parents chose to do home schooling rather than face the bullies at school.  Her story follows Miley Cyrus telling of being bullied, harassed and abused verbally and physically when she was in school. These stories follow the recent publicity given  in the New York Times to the “slut list” at “top-ranked, affluent, suburban New Jersey Millburn High School” that’s been going on for at least 10 years.  In this case, it was the “popular and athletic” girls who went after the younger girls.

Notice that these examples were of girls bullying other girls; a common occurrence that often gets lost in the glare of publicity about boys who bully.  These are often the girls who will grow up to be women who bully women at work.

Cliques of girls are just as brutal as gangs of boys.  And the wounds and scars of verbal and emotional bullying often last a lifetime.

I hope the publicity will stimulate people who can change the situation.  Who do I mean?

• Bullies and their parents.  Ultimately, bullies are responsible for their actions no matter what their excuses and justifications are.  And their parents are responsible for not teaching or setting better examples for their daughters.  In too many cases, they’re also responsible for minimizing the effects of their daughter’s behavior on the target girls and for protecting their daughters from the appropriate consequences of their actions.

But bullies have been with us forever and will continue to be.  We can’t wait for all parents to socialize their children better or for all children to change.

• Parents of the targeted girls.  They are often remiss in three areas.  First, if they don’t teach their daughters how to stand up emotionally, verbally and physically.  Yes, sometimes, physical force is necessary to stop bullying girls, just as it is often effective in stopping bullying boys.

Second, if parents don’t organize a core group of active parents to support principals who want to stop bullying or to force uncaring, lazy or cowardly principals to stop bullying at their schools.  When bullies are tolerated at a school, they prey on many targets.

Third, if parents don’t pressure reluctant legislators to make laws that can be enforced.  Often legislators focus on free speech, even when the pendulum is shifting to limit some speech in an effort to protect children.

• Targeted girls.  They can develop the emotional strength and courage, and learn skills necessary to stand up to bullies, even if their parents don’t teach them well.
• Principals who won’t act.  For example, the principal at Millburn said that there was no evidence to determine who made the list; no one had come forward to identify the predators.  Funny, I’ll bet almost every kid at school knows who organizes and publicizes the “slut list” on Facebook and through cell phones.  Principals can have proactive stop-bullying policies and programs, vetted by school district lawyers, that enroll all students, including bystanders, in outing and stopping school bullies.  I focus on principals because strong, active principals set the tone.  They involve district administrators and train teachers and staff.
• Legislators who are willing to victimize children rather than taking a strong stand against harassment, abuse and bullying.  Maybe angry parents need to make this an election issue.

Notice that I haven’t focused on understanding and therapeutizing bullies.  Let’s stop them first.  That can motivate bullies to learn other tactics.

I haven’t focused on statistics either.  Statistics may be important in swaying congressmen, but when there’s bullying at your child’s school or your child is being bullied, you don’t pay much attention to statistics.  You want your immediate situation changed.

If Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato and the kids at top-ranked, affluent, suburban schools can be bullied, harassed and abused, your daughter can be also.

Stop Bullies: Will Knowing Why Bullies Keep Abusing Us Help Us Stop Them?

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “Why Do Bullies Keep Abusing Us?” I hear that from:

• Kids who want to stop bullies and cvber bullies at school.
• Adults who want to stop bullying in their love lives or in relationships with their siblings, parents and friends.
• Adults who don’t understand why their teenagers are so demanding, nasty and surly.
• Adults who want to stop bullying at work by managers and co-workers.

That question is usually asked in the context of, “I’m a nice person; I don’t deserve to be treated that way.  Why is that person so nasty to me?”

The apparent perplexity behind the question comes from the idea that we’re supposed to get what we put out, not only in interactions with those we love, who also love us, but also in interactions with everyone in the world.  As if, if we’re nice we’re supposed to be treated nicely in return.  These people forget that bullies have different agendas and methods.

The hidden fears behind the question are:

1. “Maybe I have done something to deserve being harassed and abused; maybe it really is my fault.”  Of course, people thinking this way are usually riddled by self-doubt and negative self-talk.  Their hidden hope is, “If I knew what I’d done wrong, I could apologize, do what the bully wants, and then they’d treat me nicely.”  Their hidden anger comes from deep knowledge, “I didn’t do anything wrong; how dare that bully treat me that way!”
2. “If the world is so unfair, it’s out of my control.”  Of course, people thinking this way are afraid that they’re not strong enough to thrive in a world that’s dangerous, unpredictable and uncontrollable.  Their hidden hope is that they could control the world if only they learned the magic secrets.  Their hidden anger comes from the sense that, “I didn’t ask for this kind of world; I’m entitled to something better and more rational.”

Before I answer “Why do bullies keep abusing us,” let’s understand what bullying is about in a way that helps us stop bullies in their tracks.  Distinguish between two questions:

1. Why do children try bullying tactics?
2. Why do they keep bullying as they grow up?

The way I look at it, babies and children naturally take or demand what they want; they naturally try bullying tactics.  That’s necessary for their survival – babies must make us feed and change them whether we want to or not.  Children’s survival-level job is to figure out how to get us to give them what they want.

Impulses to bully come up all the time, in all of us.  It feels good to be a strong and powerful and simply take what we want.  Unless kids are taught how to feel good or how to get what they want by other methods, they’ll continue bullying.

Parents train children how to get what they want; which means how to bully, manipulate, harass or abuse people, or how to negotiate with us to give them what they want.  We train them to keep using bullying tactics or to try other methods.

There are three general reasons why children grow up and continue using bullying techniques.

1. Bullying is what they see – they see one or both parents bullying successfully or it’s the only tactic they know.  Their parents and family don’t teach them not to bully and also don’t teach them better ways to get what they want.
2. They keep bullying because bullying succeeds – well-meaning parents, principals and teachers don’t say “No” and they don’t stop the bullying.  Sometimes, we may let bullies succeed while we’re negotiating with them or because we’re too tired and worn down to be strong.  You’ve seen parents teach children to get cookies, candy or toys by yelling loud enough, throwing hysterical fits or simply taking it from a younger or smaller kid.
3. There’s a small group of sociopaths and psychopaths who won’t be teachable in any reasonable length of time, if ever.

Many people say that “Children become bullies because they have low self-esteem.  To make themselves feel better, they bully people who are weaker.”  This is usually followed by the hope that, “If I understand why bullies bully, I’ll be able to teach bullies why bullying is wrong, and then they’ll stop bullying.”  These people typically allow bullies to continue abusing their targets, while they educate, beg, bribe, appease or therapeutize bullies.

Instead, take the focus away from psychotherapy of bullies and focus on stopping bullying first.  Teach your kids to protect themselves from kids who haven’t learned impulse control or to use other means to navigate in the world.  After you stop the bullying, then you can spend all the time you want rehabilitating individual bullies.  As you well know, rehabilitating bullies can take a long time; let’s protect target children and adults right now. Educating bullies begins with stopping them.  Their main motivation for learning new tactics is when the old methods no longer succeed.

So why do bullies keep abusing us: Because they’re not stopped by the responsible adults.  Also, the responsible adults don’t train the targets and bystanders how to stop the bullies.  In addition, principals, teachers and parents often punish the targets for taking matters into their own hands, tongues or fists.

The secret to stopping bullies is to stop them.  Be as firm as you need – bullies will show you what you must do to stop them.

Whose Job is it to Stop Bullies in Schools?

In his recent ABC news opinion column, “Want to Stop Bullies?” Lee Dye cites new studies that claim that:

1. Girls are more likely than boys to intervene to stop bullying than boys are.
2. Girls intervene more because they’re expected to by their parents, best friends and favorite teachers.
3. Popular males are more likely to pick on weaker boys, while unpopular, weaker but aggressive boys are more likely to pick on girls.

Of course.  So what?

I’m glad Mr. Dye is speaking out and I share his desire to stop bullies and harassment, bullying and abuse in schools.

The reason I’m sarcastic is that I think these studies, done by interviewing 269 middle school students in four schools in North Central Florida, are typical of the thought process and pseudo-scientific research that says that if we knew more we could design better programs to stop bullies.  And they imply that we can’t have successful anti-bullying programs until we have more research.

However, this research adds nothing we didn’t already know.  And the generalizations are contradicted by evidence from the recent suicide deaths of four girls in Schenectady, New York.

We already know that getting the kids involved in anti-bullying programs is critical.  We already know that it’s crucial to teach children what to do when they are bystanders and see bullying.  In order to incorporate that knowledge into anti-bullying programs, we don’t need to wait until there’s more pseudo-science research to prove that point.

In summary, we know that it’s everyone’s job to stop bullying in schools and everyone’s help is necessary, especially the kids.  No one group can make a program work if the other members of the local community resist or are uncaring.  The programs in New Hampshire are only the latest reports documenting what we know already.

Successful programs have the seven elements crucial to success:

1. The programs specify acceptable and unacceptable behavior
2. Children are taught specifically what to do if they’re bullied or if they’re bystanders
3. The programs involve everyone – school board members, police, principals, teachers, administrative staff and bus drivers, the kids, and at least a vocal, core group of parents.
4. Consequences are clear and effective action rapid
5. Courageous and proactive administrators, school principals and teachers
6. Kids are also trained at home not to bully and how to stop bullies
7. All steps are implemented simultaneously

Anti-bullying laws are necessary to force reluctant or uncaring district administrators and principals to act.  They’re also necessary to protect principals and teachers who do act from bullying parents who defend their little terrorists and threaten to sue the principal and school for harassing their little bully.  That’s like in the Harry Potter series where Lucius Malfoy protects his vicious son, Draco.

The biggest problem in stopping bullies is not the lack of research about bullying: It’s the lack of skillful effort being put forth by the most caring people.  At many schools, well-meaning principals and teachers need to join forces with a core group of parents to get programs in motion.  At other schools, frustrated and angry parents need to rally other parents in order to force uncaring or cowardly school district administrators and principals to make effective school policies and then take act promptly and strongly.

Teen Suicides Stimulated by Harassment and Bullying; Students Unprotected

Two teenagers, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and Jaheem Herrera, committed suicide recently after being taunted and bullied repeatedly and relentlessly while officials at their schools did nothing. Unrelenting harassment led a third, Eric Mohat, to commit suicide a few years ago. Again, school officials denied there was a bullying problem.  Yet he was one of four bullied Mentor High School students who committed suicide that year.

All three were harassed as gay.  None was.

These three boys are just the most publicized tip of an epidemic that’s sweeping our schools.

The Use of “Gay” as Part of the Harassment and Bullying Kids will use whatever differences they can see or invent in order to gang up and attack a scapegoat.  The teen bullies used whatever came to hand or mouth – their hatred of gays.  In one sense it wasn’t about the truth of whether the targets were gay, which would be bad enough, it was about the truths that kids will use bullying tactics and these never learned better and these weren’t taught better.  Let’s not waste time analyzing why they bullied; let’s simply acknowledge that these kids failed in their character and their duty to become better, and the responsible adults never stopped them.

The Bullies’ Parents They failed in their own character and were derelict in their duties to stop their children’s behavior and to teach them better.

The Administrators, Principals and Teachers The principals and school district administrators didn’t protect these boys, just like most principals don’t protect most targets of bullying and abuse.  We need school anti-bullying laws to force principals to act and also to protect them from counter suits by bullying parents trying to protect their beloved little terrorists (like Lucius Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” series).  Of course, without specific laws, even well-meaning principals are caught in a bind.  But that’s no excuse.  When people are determined, they forge ahead.  When they don’t want to act, they talk about all the difficulties.

The Bystanders In every school, the other kids knew and many watched the bullying firsthand.  Some were probably drawn to participate in the bloodletting.  That’s the path of least resistance.  Few, if any, reported it to teachers or to their parents.  None of their parents responded effectively.  There was no public outcry before the suicides.  Again, there’s a huge failure of character and courage.

I work with parents and principals who dedicate themselves to stop bullying.  They insist on effective laws and also make the laws work effectively.

At the same time, as these examples show, we also can’t and shouldn’t count on schools to protect our children from hurt feelings.  We must help our children develop the inner grit and resilience to know how to protect themselves from verbal harassment as well as from physical abuse.

Act now at your own schools; before this epidemic spreads further.