BULLYING
Schools, parents, victims
must work together

By ROSEMARY J. STAUBER

In the March/April edition of SAN ANTONIO WOMAN, I wrote in Family Issues about “Ariel,” a middle school student who was being bullied in her school. I described bullying and the typical characters in the scenario: The bullying person, the target and the bystander.

I also talked about the difference between boy bullying and girl bullying. (Boys tend to be more physical and girls more social in their bullying. The term relational aggression is often used to describe typical female bullying.) I committed to write a follow-up column about programs for intervention into bullying.

Following are suggestions for those involved in bullying situations.

THE TARGET
The target has a choice to make whether to assume the victim role or not. The easier path is to give in to feelings and move into the victim role, but that gives the bullies more power over him/her. A better course of action: Tell an adult, and if you don’t get help from the first adult you talk to, find another one. (Some adults think kids should work this kind of thing out on their own. That is wrong. Most kids don’t have the tools they need to do that.)

Read Don’t Feed the Bully. It’s on the Web site, www.dontfeedthebully.com. The cost is low, and you can download an Acrobat Reader version for under $15 and have two books sent to you, as well. The author asks that the second book be donated to the school library.

Write down the taunts that are being used against you. Most bullies use the same ones over and over. Then you and your friends or family can come up with funny responses to defuse the situation. Role-play (practice) the responses until they become automatic.

PARENTS OF THE TARGET

Listen to your child and recognize the courage it took for him or her even to tell you. Ariel’s parents went to the school to talk to the administration about the problem. They did not have any sense that this helped. I congratulate them for doing so, however. If enough parents speak up, something will be done.

PARENTS OF THE BULLY

Help your child learn to respect others. Family therapy may be in order here. If your child is practicing bullying behavior, chances are some bullying behavior has been going on in his/her environment. As long as the bully gets “rewards” for this behavior, the bullying is likely to continue into adulthood.

SCHOOL AUTHORITIES

Recognize that bullying goes on in ALL schools. It is a mark against you only if you do nothing about it when it’s brought to your attention. Remember Columbine and all of the other schools in which targets of bullies have risen up in a rage and killed their bullies and the people who didn’t stop them. In the process innocent people were killed as well.

Ariel’s parents wanted her bullies to be punished. I say the appropriate response is education. (The word discipline comes from the Latin disciplina — instruction, knowledge.) Good discipline teaches.

I recommend that the administration develop a program that shows the school staff how to handle bullying situations and teaches the children basic communication skills and safety techniques. Preferably, this will occur as soon as possible. While no one tends to think their bullying situation could escalate into a Columbine (we feel safer when we think that way), the administration at those schools where the escalation DID occur probably didn’t think so either.

Diane Senn, author of Bullying in the Girl’s World, recommends an all-school program including:

• Student surveys to learn the extent of bullying behavior in the school

• Teacher in-service on student bullying

• Creating a bullying report form

• Lesson plans for student classrooms on bullying

• Stocking the library with literature on bullying

• Wall displays to promote a bully-free school

• Small group discussions to encourage targets to respond in a healthy way and to report all incidents of bullying

• Small group discussions to encourage treating everyone with respect and help bullying folks to learn empathy for others.

(Adapted from Bullying in the Girl’s World, which includes samples of these strategies.)
Barbara Coloroso wrote the book The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander. From her Web site, I got the following:

1. INTERVENE WITH DISCIPLINE
Communicate clear discipline policies. Every student should know that unkind acts will result in immediate discipline. Create policies that give children who bully ownership of the problem and ways to solve it via restitution, resolution and reconciliation. When dealing with children who bully, it is important to leave their dignity intact.

2. CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS TO "DO GOOD"
Promote activities that encourage students to extend themselves to others. Get children who bully involved in serving as crossing guards or reading to a group of younger students. To foster "do good" habits, leave sponges at the end of lunch tables to encourage children to clean up their area for the next person.

3. NURTURE EMPATHY
Help children see the perspectives of others. Study historical events where people have stood up for values and against injustices. Read Jack and the Beanstalk and ask students to take an unconventional point of view — the giant's. Lead them in some role-playing with questions like "How would you feel if somebody kept taking your belongings?”

4. TEACH FRIENDSHIP SKILLS
There are three antidotes to bullying: a strong sense of self, being a good friend and having friends. Many who bully or are bullied lack friendship skills. Educators, parents and other leaders can help break the bullying cycle by both teaching and modeling skills about how to be a friend and make friends.

5. MONITOR CHILDREN'S EXPOSURE TO MEDIA
Schools can help raise parents' awareness of the importance of monitoring their children's exposure to violence through television, music, video games and so on. Schools can also teach children to be media-wise and to discern between fact and fiction.

6. ENGAGE CHILDREN IN CONSTRUCTIVE ACTIVITIES
Provide cooperative, challenging games that promote civility while reducing the number of competitive activities that reinforce social cliques. For example, when a child scores for her team in a volleyball game, send her over to help the other side. Give children positive outlets for their energy. Have them "attack" a climbing wall and feel good about the challenge.

7. TEACH WAYS TO "WILL GOOD"
In the book Integrity, Stephen Carter defines "willing good" as "speaking and doing what is right even when the burden is heavy." Sticking up for a peer means taking a risk, and children must be inspired to do so. Reading stories such as Number the Stars by Lois Lowry can help children understand what it means to "will good."

Coloroso cautions against programs that focus on conflict resolution. "Bullying should not be dealt with as a conflict," Coloroso maintains. "It's not [conflict], it's a person having contempt, a basic disregard for the other person as a human being."

RESOURCES:

• Don’t Feed the Bully, by Brad Tassell, L. Jessat Publishing, Santa Claus, IN, 2006

• Bullying in the Girl’s World, by Diane Senn, Youthlight, Inc. 2000

• The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, by Barbara Coloroso, Harper Resource, 2003

• www.dontfeedthebully.com

• stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov

• Finally, Google keyword “bully.” There are many great resources on the Internet.

Rosemary J. Stauber, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in San Antonio and founding director of the Bexar County Women’s Center.