The following video, ‘I’m Here For You’, was presented by J Richard Knapp, CEO and
Stop Bullies Founder and CEO
Cathy Knapp, President of Stop-Bullies.com to an audience of three secondary schools providing services to thousands of students, which included classified, certified, and administrative employees. This presentation focused on the ‘culture’ needed in a school’s foundation to develop an effective bully prevention program.
by Mandy-Jane Clarke, Australia
Stop Bullies Founder
If you bully others, we’re glad you’re here. If you’re not sure if what you’re doing is really bullying, then take our quick quiz that’ll help you decide. (But here’s a hint: If you are hurting or threatening others in some way and using your size, strength or popularity to do it … you’re probably bullying someone!)
Hey – let’s face it, hurting and making others feel bad is NEVER cool. Just admitting that you are doing things to harm others takes some guts. But that’s not enough. Trying to find out what you should do to change the way you’re acting … now that’s a step in the right direction! So check out these tips … they’ll help you to start treating others with the respect they deserve.
Think about what you’re doing … and how it affects others. If you think calling others names is really harmless, or if you think pushing, hitting or stealing from other kids is funny, you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be hurt yourself! Teasing, hitting, keeping others out of a group – all of these things harm someone. All of us have been hurt at one time or another and we all know how it feels – awful! So the next time you are about to bully someone:
Talk to an adult. Making other people feel badly should never make you feel good. If it does, or if you’re not really sure why you bully other kids, you need to talk to an adult about it. Even though you might think an adult won’t understand, or that you’ll get yourself into trouble, they can help! Whether it is your parent, a teacher or another trusted grown-up, you should tell an adult how you’ve been acting so that they help you deal with it. School counselors are also great people to talk to about how you feel and how to change the way you treat others.
by Mandy-Jane Clarke, Australia
an excerpt of the October Issue of Stop-Bullies eNewsletter
There does exist certain clues to look for when determining whether your child is a bully and to what extent their bullying behavior reaches. Your child’s school may have telephoned to inform you that your child has been involved in an incident of bullying. It is most common for bullying behavior to take place in schools which can include verbal and physical abuse.
Are your siblings treated in an unkind way by your child? Verbal abuse is one of the first signs of bullying behavior. If this behavior is not corrected, it can escalate into physical abuse.
To read the entirety of this article...
by Eden, Guest Teen Author, USA
Featured High School Student Author
Every day people are bullied, and the effects can be devastating. It can rob someone of their self-esteem, their friends, and their happiness. However, what happens when people start to reach out to these people to accept them into a group and to make them feel like they belong somewhere? This is a story of a boy, whose experience was just that.
I first met Kyle two years ago when he transferred into my middle school halfway through the year. When he first came to school, he tried to make friends. He was nice to everyone, participated in class, and smiled all the time. But no one seemed to share his enthusiasm, because he was different. You see, Kyle is autistic. And so, people were cruel to him; they laughed when he talked in class, excluded him at lunch, and tripped him in the halls. I have always tried to reach out to him, and at first, he and I talked, and he seemed to appreciate my friendship. But it didn’t last long.
The change that I saw in him over the next few months was heartbreaking. He stopped talking to everyone, including me. He was always by himself and he stopped smiling. He had hardened.
Even when I tried to talk to him, he would just shut down. Worst of all, he started being mean to people too. I guess that he figured that if he was mean to people first, they wouldn’t be mean to him. The rest of his year continued this way, and thus, it came to an end.
The next time I saw Kyle was in high school, and he was very much the same if not worse. He looked lonely and sad as he wandered the halls alone. Once again, I tried to talk to him, to no avail. And so it was that the freshman year came to a close, too. But on the last day of school, I saw him looking at the posting of the choir audition results, and I noticed something strange. He was smiling. It looked awkward and foreign on his face, but unmistakably, it was a smile.
I walked up to him and said, “Hi Kyle. Did you audition?”
Much to my surprise, he replied, “Yes,” he answered. “And I got in.”
Seeing him happy and talking again was really a remarkable feeling. I congratulated Kyle and told him I was excited to have a class with him next year.
I walked away from Kyle with a wonderful warm feeling in my heart.
This year, Kyle and I are in choir together. Once again, I have seen a huge change in him, only this time for the better. The choir kids accepted him into the group with open arms, and I no longer see him alone. The best thing is, he’s always smiling now.
Kyle was a person that I thought to be beyond help. But what I didn’t realize was, all he needed, was to belong somewhere.
Understanding bullying is an incredibly complex issue. More and more people are realizing
there are many components to this behavior which must be examined. As we clearly gain understanding of these components, our potential to solve the devastation of bullying are greatly enhanced.
But what if the behavior we are seeing is really symptomatic of a much larger problem? We could find ourselves treating the symptom and not really getting to the root of the problem. It’s like giving someone Tylenol for the pain without ever examining them to understand the root cause of it.
This is exactly the role poverty may be playing in this discussion. Ruby Payne (1996), a leading expert in poverty, explains, language is not the predominant means of communication in poverty. Being physically dominant is part of survival. If you want or need something you need to take it, not as we often say in the middle class, “use your words”. Being physically dominant is also equated to safety. In the world of poverty, children pushing, shoving and grabbing is acceptable and necessary, but in most of our eyes it can earn you a consequence and even a label.
What do we do as we look at the role poverty may be playing in our issues of bullying? First, people must understand their own bias regarding who they perceive to be bullies and victims. This includes an openness to examine bullying in relationship to poverty. It is during this examination that we may see poverty patterns beginning to emerge.
Second, as adults we need to help all of our children understand what rules apply where and how to behave appropriately in different situations. For many of our children in poverty coming to school is very much like visiting a foreign country where all the accepted norms and customs of their worlds do not apply.
Let’s be clear, we are not telling people to ignore these behaviors. Instead, let’s understand where these behaviors may be coming from and apply effective intervention strategies on the behalf of these children. We must be constantly aware of the role poverty is playing in our lives and the lives of our children. This includes bullying! Let’s deal with the root and not the symptom.
Stop-Bullies.com is pleased to announce our October contributing authors and articles. Our mission is to give every parent access to these wonderful experts in relationship to bullying through their schools and other organizations:
Make sure your child can recognize the sneakier types of bullying and intimidation. Young children sometimes think bullying is hitting and name calling but being cold shouldered or receiving hostile looks and gestures can be very hurtful. Not all bullying is face to face and cyber bullying is a modern version of taunting a child and undermining their confidence. Your child needs to know that you will not accept someone saying something to them that is designed to upset them. Make an agreement with your child that you want to know when they are unhappy so that you can solve any problems together.
Stop-Bullies.com Publication
Bullying amongst girls reveals some startling girl bullying statistics. A girl is bullied every seven minutes in the school yard, playground, stairwell, classroom or bathroom. Girl bullying statistics show that 43% fear harassment in the bathroom at school. In addition, intervention accounts for only 4% among teachers and 11% among the victim’s peers. Sadly and quite shockingly, 85% of the time there is no intervention by anyone in authority whatsoever.
The girl bullying statistics, once again, brings up the point that school girl bullying is either dismissed or not considered dangerous. One of the many ways to discourage school girl bullying is for the administrative staff, teachers, guidance counselors and school-based support team to develop a program designed to encourage kids to be kind to each other. Give them the tools they need to stop school girl bullying as it unfolds and, more importantly, find a way for girls who are bullied to be able to tell a school staff member without worrying about the consequences.
The problem is that most school girl bullying encompasses friends who are told to keep tabs on the victim. For example, they may notice that the victim talks more frequently to a guidance counselor, or makes a visit to the assistant principal’s office soon after an episode occurs, or they may check to see if she is being picked up by her parents or a guardian after school.
Bullying amongst girls is rampant. Girl bullying statistics reveal that only 15% of girls who are bullied actually tell someone. This is an alarming yet consistent statistic which underscores the need for a program designed to bring about awareness of just how serious school girl bullying has become.
In today’s middle schools, school girl bullies are difficult to discipline. Moreover, catching them in the act is almost impossible since they are not as direct as boy bullies who overtly choose to fight. Bullying amongst girls is subtle. It is usually done by passing along rumors, leaving the victim helpless in locating the source.
While boys may bully other boys, either because they are different or appear weak, school girl bullying impedes on one’s emotions. In middle schools especially, new girls find it difficult to form friendships and because peer pressure is so high, they may fall in with the wrong group of girls led by a girl bully. Thus, if they witness an incident of school girl bullying, they are betwixt and between as to whether or not the incident should be reported.
According to the National Institute of Childhood Diseases, “bullying is a public health problem that merits attention.” One might argue that this assessment does not come close to solving the problem, and that school girl bullying has gone beyond simply “meriting attention.”
Bullying amongst girls is more widespread that once thought, yet at the same time it eludes officials in schools. School incident reports are rarely filed in these cases, and parents of the girl bully view this type of behavior as warranted. These are parents who exhibit abusive behavior as well, and it seems logical to conclude that girl bullying is a learned behavior.
Stop-Bullies.com
In the United States there are approximately 55 million students attending public and
private schools from pre-kindergarten to the twelfth grade. We know that about 1 in 5 students will be bullied at school this year which does not include those bullied outside of school. So let’s say this moves our statistics up to about a third of our kids being bullied. That is a tremendous number of bullying victims! Isn’t just one too many?
Now think about this… If ten students were physically injured by bullying, we can only expect six will report the incident. The statistics drop to five out of ten students in incidents of threats and destruction of property.
You may said, “Well, if I had seen it – I would have put a stop to it!” Not true! We as adults only see about 10% of the bullying happening around us.
Why is it that significant numbers of our bullied youth are not reporting the incidents? The reporting of bullying appears to be related to the level of seriousness of the act and the trust level between the victim and the adult. For example, if a student is injured by the bully the likelihood of the victim reporting the incident increases. This is also true of physical threats, destruction or stealing of property, and physical contact. Sadly, even these numbers are not good, but bullying which includes teasing, making fun of, name calling, exclusion/isolation, and rumors are even more likely to not be reported. There appears to be a belief in the victims that these types of bullying incidents are not acts of bullying or that adults will not view them as such.
This is why as adults it is absolutely critical that our children know they can trust us to help them with this problem. Second, we must open our eyes and recognize the signs around us when this behavior is occurring.
References: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2010. National Center for Educational Statistics. 2010; National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, Issues and Answers, REL 2010 – Number 092, What characteristics of bullying, bullying victims, and schools are associated with increased reporting of bullying to school officials?, Anthony Petrosino, Sarah Guckenburg, Jill DeVoe, Thomas Hanson, August 2010; Unnever, J. & Cornell, D. (2004). Middle school victims of bullying: Who reports being bullied? Aggressive Behavior, 30, 373-388.
A personal look at bullying through the eyes of the victim.
J Richard Knapp, USA
One of the most difficult times in the life of a parent is when you think your child may be the victim of bullying. Keep in mind a few facts for you to consider: (1.) Bullying can result in long term physical and mental consequences for the victim, bully, and bystanders. (2.) Go with your instincts. If you think something is wrong with your child – you are probably right. (3.) Never lose the trust of your child! This check list may help you as you search for answers:
My child…
Reminder: Having one or more of these tendencies does not automatically make the child the victim of bullying. Any young person demonstrating these tendencies should be considered for a closer evaluation.