Stop hassling me
Breaking the
cycle of bullying
By Steve Fisher
MEDIA BAKER Y/RF
IT USED TO BE dismissed as a “normal” part
of growing up. It can happen to, and be caused
by, boys or girls. It ranges from verbal taunting to physical brutalization. It happens on
the way to school, on school property, by
phone and in cyberspace. For the perpetrators, it’s “fun.” For the recipients, torture.
It’s called bullying, and effects can be
long-lasting—from depression and low self-esteem into adulthood, to adolescent suicide
for the bullied, to criminal behavior on the
part of the bully. And despite the proliferation
of school and community programs to deal
with it, “almost 30 percent of youth in the
United States are estimated to be involved, as
either a bully, a target of bullying, or both,”
according to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center (
www.safeyouth.org).
IT USED TO BE dismissed as a “normal” part
of growing up. It can happen to, and be caused
The root of the problem
Speaker and author Barbara Coloroso
(
http://kidsareworthit.com) claims we are living in a “culture of mean.” The Littleton,
Colorado, Costco member says, “Kids are
learning from the shows they watch, and the
video games they play, to get pleasure from
somebody else’s pain. Bill Cosby said it so
beautifully: ‘I miss the days when comedy
wasn’t mean. When you weren’t making a
joke at somebody else’s expense.’ Kids are
exposed to that regularly.”
“The anti-bullying education makes the
problem worse,” asserts school psychologist
and psychotherapist Israel C. “Izzy” Kalman
(
www.bullies2buddies.com), a Costco member
in New York City. “It’s letting kids know that
all kinds of things should upset them. Words
should upset them. There are all kinds of
things they shouldn’t tolerate, so when it happens, they get angry and when they get angry
it happens even more.
“Parents are being led to believe it’s the
school’s responsibility to make the bullying
stop. But the schools can’t make it stop
because the anti-bullying programs don’t
work. The schools are instructing kids to tell.
So what happens? You and I are kids in school;
I tell the school you bullied me. They get
involved and punish you. That’s going to
make you like me?”
Beat the bully
If the problem is recognized and the solutions don’t seem to be working, can bullying
ever be stopped? Coloroso and Kalman believe
it can, although their approaches differ.
“I do believe we have to hold the bully
accountable, empower the target and keep
them safe,” Coloroso says. She also believes
bystanders have to be taught not to be complacent and to express disapproval.
It starts with parents. Coloroso tells the
story of a parent, whose child was being
bullied, calling the parent of the bully and
being cut off because the other parent
was in the middle of making dinner. “If
someone called me to say my child was
bullying theirs,” attests Coloroso, “dinner
would be waiting for a while.”
It is not simply a matter of addressing
the issue but also of modeling empathetic behavior. “When you’re at a family gathering, and somebody tells a
racist or sexist joke, can your
children hear you saying, in
front of all the relatives, ‘I’m
bothered by that’ or ‘That was
cruel’?” Coloroso asks. “You
know you’ve had an impact
when you walk back in
If your child
is bullied
DO’S:
• Tell your child, “I hear you; I am here for
you; I believe you; you are not alone in this.”
• Tell your child, “It is not your fault.”
• Tell your child, “There are things you can do.”
[See “Tips for kids” on page 34.—Ed.]
•Report the bullying to school personnel.
DON’TS:
•Don’t minimalize, rationalize or explain
away the bully’s behavior.
•Don’t solve the problem for your child.
•Don’t tell your child to avoid the bully.
•Don’t tell your child to fight back.
•Don’t confront the bully or the bully’s
parents alone.
Adapted from The Bully, the Bullied,
and the Bystander, by Barbara Coloroso
(Collins Living, 2008).
