Jun 24 2008
Evil Starts at Home…
Below is a story on an issue that’s receiving more attention recently but it unfortunately is often presented in a poor manner. That is, too many parents do not recognize how serious of an issue bullying really is. I’ve seen far too many parents fail in their duty as caregivers by letting their kids just do whatever they want without properly guiding/teaching them. They somehow think “kids will be kids,” and “they’ll work it out themselves,” and “that’s what kids do.”
Although such sentiment can be true sometimes, in many cases those are some of the stupidest/most ignorant words a parent can say. Namely, when we see that most adults in all spheres of life cannot resolve issues as ideally as we would hope, why should we expect children to manage any better?!
The last decade or two has seen the nastiest, most mean-spirited themes and tones in kids’ programs ever. It’s not a coyote trying to kill a road runner, which kids eventually realize is fantasy. No, it’s “normal” kids acting really cruelly to each other and being rewarded for it to the point that such inappropriate behaviour becomes the norm for the kids watching. And incompetent parents who are “too busy” to play an active role in their kids’ lives do not monitor or discuss with their kids what they’re watching, so they know that certain attitudes and behaviours they see on TV are not appropriate nor acceptable. Hell, too many parens convey the same kinds of attitudes themselves.
Unfortunately, as is often the case, good intentions get presented poorly, so we see parents and schools outlawing any competitive games. We see schools applying “zero tolerance” policies to games such as “tag” or “cops and robbers.” These kinds of inane over-reactions are what encourage the average person–who, as I’ve said, is not that bright and typically engages in “black and white thinking”–to think the issue is being blown out of proportion.
Such people then can continue blindly allowing their own kids to become the kinds of cruel, selfish, mean, back-stabbing, devious creeps we see in the news all the time. Such scum are usually not born that way. They usually learn to be scum by their caregivers, siblings, peers, and/or media. And only a good parent can intervene to teach/show them the right way.
Look around with a critical eye and you will see how many “bad” parents there are. They don’t have to be as bad as Bernardo’s father (thanks, FunkyMe) to make their kids scum. Letting kids be exposed to things they don’t understand, so that they blindly emulate what they see without any guidance from their parents is one of the most common symptoms of a BAD PARENT.
READ ON:
Bullying starts when they’re still playing Barbies
(June 23, 2008) LEANNE ITALIE — ASSOCIATED PRESS
Recess was Allie Long’s favorite part of the day until the second grade, when some of her friends on the playground pressured her to join their whisper campaign against a classmate. Allie shrugged. She didn’t want to hear their rumor or help spread it around. In an instant, her best friends since kindergarten became her tormenters.
“They started taunting and teasing her,” said Allie’s mom, Trudy Ludwig. “She was on this play structure and they blocked all of the exits and wouldn’t let her off. They started moving closer to her. Allie just freaked out. One of the girls realized it was getting out of hand and got a teacher to help.”
Bullying among adolescents has captured the attention of researchers, educators and parents alarmed by a parade of mean girls and cyber-bullies caught in mid-punch on viral video. But such aggression may not just happen in a whirl of adolescent hormones, some in the growing anti-bully movement argue.
Some older bullies were “Barbie brats” first. In Allie’s case, the kids were talked to, but things weren’t the same at her Beaverton, Ore., school. “My daughter cried herself to sleep on and off for several months,” Ludwig said. “She had stomach aches. The phone stopped ringing. No playdates. No invitations to sleepovers.” They were just 7 years old.
Meline Kevorkian, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., researcher and public speaker on bullying, surveyed 167 educators last year and 25 percent indicated bullying occurs most in elementary schools. Research also indicates that three-quarters of 8- to 11-year-olds report they’ve been bullied, with more than half identifying it as a “big” problem, Kevorkian said.
“It could be you wear the wrong shoes or the wrong socks. If you didn’t go to the Hannah Montana concert. Your lunch smells. You can’t wear certain bows in your hair,” she said. “It’s not that the victims are all going to grow up and shoot kids in their high school, but it’s the message that making fun of people will make you popular.”
Rumour-spreading, teasing, exclusive clubs, secrets. What social scientists describe as “relational aggression” is often written off among younger kids as routine rites of passage not worthy of extra hands-on attention, Kevorkian and other anti-bully experts said.
Parents of targeted children agreed. “Everybody seems under the impression that their child is well behaved in all settings,” said Lisa Borre, whose 9-year-old son, Franklin, loves sports but is small for his age and often struggles for equal time during playground baseball and basketball games in Libertyville, Ill.
“Nobody is willing to believe their children might behave differently on the playground,” she said. “I just sort of felt like at this age the kids would still be gentler, kinder, would still behave more like little children. It’s almost like a smaller version of an adult world that he’s dealing with.”
Ludwig, who was inspired by her now 14-year-old daughter’s experience to write four picture books on bullying, said girls in particular often connect by sharing secrets that can later be turned into weapons. Such verbal abuse and social manipulation, which is on the rise in boys, “flies under the radar” of harried parents, teachers or baby sitters.
“It’s evident in preschool. ‘If you don’t let me play with that toy I won’t invite you to my birthday party,’” Ludwig said. “Intentional exclusion is bullying. Giving the silent treatment is bullying. It’s not a part of growing up. It’s not something kids can work out themselves. It’s not normal conflict. We’ve normalized this abnormal behaviour in our society.”
Little research has tracked bullying among the very young, but the topic is beginning to gain momentum. Intervention programs, including fifth-graders tapped as peer mediators on playgrounds, began popping up a few years ago in elementary schools, but the institutional response to bullying is often piecemeal or inconsistent, advocates said.
Michele Borba, who writes and speaks frequently on bullying, felt so intensely about such incidents among the very young that she helped develop a “Caring Corners” doll house due on the market later this year, designed to talk to kids about positive behaviour. “Little kids are born to be kind-hearted,” Borba said. “They’ve got that natural empathy, but unless you nurture it, it lies dormant.”
Nurturing empathy might be hard for competitive parents who scream at 6-year-olds during soccer games, or buy Coach bags for their girls, then wonder out loud who’s carrying the knockoffs, said Barbara Kimmel, the mother of two boys, ages 11 and 14, in Morris County, N.J.
Technology makes it even harder. “The cyber-bullying starts at 10 or 11 now,” she said. “It’s pervasive.”
To psychologist Jennifer Hartstein, who works with troubled adolescents in New York City, signs are evident even earlier. She cites a recent party she attended for a 6-year-old that featured a pinata. “It was, like, who can you step on and push fast enough to get the candy,” she said. “It’s this ‘me generation’ of ‘I have to get what’s mine.’ It’s the precursor to more serious bullying. You really have to catch it as it happens at younger ages.”
For five years of elementary school I was the target (physically, emotionally and psychologically) of a bully. From the ages of 7-12 that bully was the principal of a small catholic elementary school with more power than current principals have. At that early age I didn’t even have the words to say what was occurring because it wasn’t supposed to be happening, and I was being threatened about what would happen “if I told,” these threats heightened as I got older. (Please note, that @ this time “the strap/ hitting was against the law). Also, children act out in this situation not like “little adults” - but as children. What can be seen as whiny - can actually be terror/anxiety.
This situation was then spread over time to other teachers (50% average), and of course for my peers - I was the “easy target.” Due to the impressionable age I was I listened to what I was told and worse yet - I believed all of it. I didn’t tell my parents (who should have known better) nor a sibling of mine who went to the same school who was also being bullied by students. One teacher who saw the principal actually hit me looked at me, and then walked away. Eventually, when I told my parents years later - they didn’t believe me.
I am NOT writing this as a victim, I am writing this as a strong person who values her self worth and survived. I pride myself on making a complaint with the school board (if nobody else did - I know that I DID). I’m writing because this IS STILL an issue many look away from and a) hope someone else will “do the right thing” or worse b) blame the victim as somehow @ fault for what is occurring. The victim alone did not get themselves into the situation nor can they alone get themselves out of the situation.
Looking away is the worst thing a person can do whether your child is being bullied or bullying others - because the bullying doesn’t end @ the end of the school day it goes farther and deeper on so many levels.
All of this starts @ home and giving your child the ability to be themselves in an environment that is not authoritarian (We own you, you obey OUR rules) but emphathetic/ humanitarian (be yourself, with boundaries) where you are valued and that changes in behavior are noted and acted upon immediately.
Thank you for sharing your story FunkyMe. Bullying can have lingering effects and it is unfortunate that many people brush it off as insignificant. I agree with you in that it is a difficult situation for a child to handle, especially when the bully is a person of authority. I remembered being bullied by my peers when I was a kid, and I can still recall vividly, years later, that feeling of powerlessness and shame.
I don’t think bullying is a “new thing”, but it has taken new heights for sure over the last couple of decades (as RR mentioned).
As a parent, I am terrified at the idea of my kids being bullied at school. So far, I have been very lucky to maintain a good relationship with them, and I know that they trust me and come to me when something bothers them. When something happens at school that make them feel uncomfortable, we always talk about it. When I see them behaving harshly with other kids, I tell them of my concerns.. and I always explain to them why. I watch for the signs that they are being bullied (not wanting to go to school, unexplained tummy aches …) but I am still unsure that all that will be suffiicient to protect them. As RR said, we need to let the kids solve their problems so they can learn to be assertive, but where is the line? Again, as RR mentioned, schools often go overboard with their zero tolerance policies while some parents are clueless about the problem. But If I sit somewhere in the middle, there still is no guarantee that my child won’t be bullied… and that scares the hell out of me!
I don’t think “my story” is the worst - others have been through MUCH MUCH more, and I think the majority of people who’ve been to school had their share of bullying. Your sentence says it all though “I remembered being bullied by my peers when I was a kid, and I can still recall vividly, years later, that feeling of powerlessness and shame.”
But i look on the bright side, we’ll have better parenting techniques, know signs to look for - have great advice from books, web-sites like this one! and also people are starting slowly to write about it and create groups to stop it. I highly recccommend the book ” The bully, the bulllied and the bystander” by Barbara Coloroso it is FABULOUS and hits all the right targets - I saw her speak and she really “gets it.”
It’s a cliche but it made me a stronger person. When I spot a bully (in the workplace, wherever) I think I’ve faced down worse than you. My parents and I have never gotten along better - they believe me and support what I’ve been through. (after a LOT of work just putting it behind me).
Thank you for your kind words Lilly.
Very true! yes, some kids have it so bad that they actually commit suicide.
I have to check out that book, but from the title itself, it looks like it’s right on. When we talk about bullying, we often think of the bully and the victim as the main actors, when in fact the bystander plays an equal part. All through last year, I facilitated parenting groups, in which the topic came up. The most difficult part was to make some parents understand that to watch it happening and not act, is just as harmful.
At the same time, some bystanders don’t act because they are afraid the bully will turn on them, and the guilt they feel is even worse than the bullying itself. It’s a vicious circle!
Thank you very much, FunkyMe and Lily, for sharing your experiences as both children and adults/parents. There was a program on CBC Newsworld 2 years ago, focusing on young girls who are bullies. Their parents were horrible: they refused to acknowledge what their girls were doing or, more important, the impact of their girls’ actions on the girls they were bullying. It was so obvious where their daughters got their attitude and behaviours from.
Some idiot panel member praised the parents of these bullies for their “courage” to appear on the show. More likely, they relished the opportunity for some “fame” at the expense of their little monster girls. They certainly didn’t “get it” so they didn’t benefit from involvement in the program. Also, the naive viewer would say that some of these bad parents DID get it eventually. But anyone who knows how to assess and read between the lines of what people say and how they say it could tell that these “parents” will not change anything significantly in how they raise their girls until the little monsters’ actions have a direct impact on their parents.
But for every incompetent parent such as the ones on the program, we can only hope that there will be many more with the proper mindset as you two have, FunkyMe and Lily. Thank you again for your contributions.
I think the newer technological tactics (cyber-bullying/ cell phones/ You Tube/ Facebook etc…) that are being used to bully scare me more than ever - that and the serious injuries and gang mentality that are in schools now. I shiver to think of me in that situation with the “newer “bullying currently in use with the olfd formula of: The bully, the bullied and the bystanders: all three play a role. And I firmly believe that the bully and bystanders are fully aware that the actions they are putting other through are actions they wouldn’t want to be put through and they know it’s wrong. As for it being brought to the attention that there’s a “rise” in female bullying - I don’t believe that. I think that it been there all along.
Thank you RR for giving a safe place for people to exchange information/ ideas from all aspects and hopefully reach others who may have been, or are facing this situation and see that they have an impact and that they CAN get help. (Your website is an example of that - not matter what the issue).
These are not “new” stories - but I believe that from every story you can learn and pass it on and make differences that you’re not even aware you’ve made in someone’s life — and that is what I prefer to look @ . How can I take a strong positive approach in my everyday life rather than wallow in a situation I can’t fix. I’d actually like to hear from a bully or a bully’s parent and see what they have to say.
Yeah, all those new-age techniques such as cyber-bullying, YouTube and Facebook scare the crap out of me too!!
You know, FunkyMe, you might be right in saying that female bullying has been there all along. Aggression in girls display itself in a different manner, and we (as a society) did not address it, mostly because of all the stereotypes and expectations that we have of boys and girls. So, when a girl is using a “subtle” form of aggression such as ignoring or spreading rumours, we always treated it as “something that girls do”. It is only recently, with a surge of delinquent girls, that scholars have taken notice of the issue and started looking into it more closely.
The difference now (in my opinion anyway) is that girls are becoming more physically violent. And while researchers took interest, there is still very few programs that deal with girlhood aggression. And that’s a shame, because I firmly believe that girls with aggressive behaviour need a treatment program that is gender-specific. And the sooner you intervene, the better!!
RR, I haven’t seen that show on Newsworld, so all I can say is that I am always wary of those programs which put real people with a particular problem (whatever it might be) on TV for the whole world to see. I don’t get the rationale behind it; I think it’s harmful, senseless, and cheap to use people who struggle with a real issue that way (possibly to crank up their ratings).