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The B-Word

8/22/2013

5 Comments

 
I’d like to recommend a book that has changed the way I look at the issue of bullying and aggression at my school.  Turn on the news, listen to discussions among parents and school staff, or think of how often kids say to you, “He’s bullying me!”  It seems that we’re in the middle of a bullying epidemic, doesn’t it? 

It may seem that way, but we’re not. 
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In her book Bully Nation, Susan Eva Porter totally dismantles the widely-accepted notion that kids are under siege from bullies 24/7.  While she provides a number of good reasons why we have that impression, one is so obvious that I can’t believe it never occurred to me: the definition of bullying has expanded hugely in the last ten years or so.​

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Bullying used to be defined as some form of coercion---forcing someone, usually smaller, to do something they didn’t want to do---often via physical force. It was pretty clear, and most people could agree if something constituted bullying or not.  But in the last decade behaviors that used to be considered just plain mean or even routine kid stuff are now being called bullying. 

What was fairly black-and-white is now much grayer.  Many of the newly classified “bullying behaviors” are subtle and subject to interpretation.  The “subject to interpretation” part is important to note because as the definition of bullying has expanded and become more amorphous, anti-bully language, school policies, and state laws have moved in the opposite direction, growing more rigid and unequivocal.  

In almost any situation at school where there is a conflict between children, anti-bullying procedures kick in (in some states, by law).  These policies force us to spend huge amounts of time and energy investigating every incident, require us to place black-and-white labels on children, and take away our ability to use our professional judgment in dealing with individual situations.
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Bully language is overly simplistic and emotionally laden. Its labels---bully, victim, bystander---place children in predetermined roles that are each harmful in their own way. Once the roles have been assigned it is nearly impossible for adults to look at all sides of the story, to have compassion for the child who is labeled as the bully, or to focus on solutions instead of punishment. 

Bully language also makes it almost impossible for children to feel hopeful or empowered.  The anti-bullying programs and procedures we’re being required to implement give kids a whole lot of messages we shouldn’t be comfortable with.  

For “victims,” these include things like:
  • Anything anyone does that causes me any type of emotional discomfort or pain is bullying, and it can damage me for life
  • I have no control over how I feel; I am completely at the mercy of others and how they treat me
  • I am incapable of solving my own problems
  • If I’m a “victim,” I don’t have to examine or take responsibility for my own actions

For “bullies:”
  • If I hurt someone’s feelings---even if that wasn’t my intention---then I am a bully
  • I can never make a social mistake
  • Relationships can’t be fixed once there’s a problem
  • Being a “bully” means I’m a bad kid and I can never change

And even for “bystanders:”
  • It is my responsibility to stand up for others even if I don’t understand what’s going on
  • If I don’t intervene, then I am just as guilty as the bully

The problem with these messages is obvious: they are the opposite of the messages we try to impart to our students every day---that they are worthwhile individuals who are in the process of learning how to be caring, capable, and resilient problem-solvers. 
Porter reminds us repeatedly that we are talking about children. During their school careers, kids have to learn many complex social-emotional skills: how to manage their feelings, control their impulses, read social cues, develop empathy, and tolerate frustration, to name a few.  

Expecting children to do these things---perfectly, at all times, and regardless of whether or not they are developmentally able to (as Zero Tolerance policies dictate)---is setting them up to fail in a spectacular fashion. 

Social-emotional skills are complicated and need to be explicitly taught.  They require lots of practice, reinforcement, and correction, and the child has to be developmentally ready to learn them.  Trying to legislate mature social behavior or to teach it only by punishing mistakes would be like suspending a Kindergartener for not knowing his multiplication tables: ridiculous, ineffective, and harmful to his mental health.

I believe most kids’ difficulties are a result of skill-based deficits or developmental delays (thanks, Collaborative Problem Solving!), so I try to look at situations from each child’s perspective while considering history and context.  Once we label a child a bully, we've decided he or she is deliberately setting out to harm peers.  We lose both our compassion for that child and our ability to help.  Once we label a child a bully, we stop thinking about how to teach and turn to thinking about how to punish.  At times I've been accused of being an apologist for a kid’s bad behavior if I even attempt to reframe the conversation as an issue of lagging skills.

School counselors---of all people---need to be able to recognize the complexities of children’s interactions, identify the lagging skills (of all parties!) that create problems, and help come up with positive solutions that will teach those skills.  And we need to do it with compassion. 
I’ll be scheduling a meeting with my administrators to discuss my personal plan for the upcoming year:
  1. I will not use any type of bully language when discussing students, and I will steer my colleagues away from doing so.
  2. I will never forget that:
  • all students do well if they can; they are children who are learning how to be kind and socially appropriate and who need support (and appropriate modeling by adults!) to do so
  • there are always two sides to a story; almost nothing is as black-and-white as it may first appear
  • there is always hope
3. I will adapt my practice this year by focusing on helping kids develop resilience: 
  • I’ll spend at least part of each session recognizing progress instead of harping on problems
  • I’ll teach specific skills for identifying and managing emotions
  • I’ll teach specific skills for self-calming
  • I’ll provide accurate feedback about students’ behavior  
  • I’ll continue to use Izzy Kalman’s Bullies to Buddies materials to help children reject others’ negative comments about them (www.bullies2buddies.com) 
4. If I am unable to summon patience and compassion when dealing with a specific child, I will either wait until I can access my “adult brain” or find someone else who can.

I’m thinking seriously too about teaching kids those verbal talismans that used to “protect” us when we were in school: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me and I’m rubber, you’re glue; what you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

I can hear you now: "You're crazy, Laurie!”  

I know you are but what am I?  

Read the book.  Let’s discuss.


5 Comments
Eleanor Grant
8/22/2013 09:42:49 pm

Reply
Serena
8/24/2013 08:21:32 am

AMAZING! I am going to go get that book for myself (and maybe for our guidance counselors) immediately! I love the break down of the negative implications of the language. I totally agree that bullying has become something different than it was. Can you remember all the movies that came out in the 80's about the loser kids and the cool kids and the things they did to each other??? Now, THAT was bullying. I think I might post some of those old sayings in my office as well. Empower, empower, empower! You go girl!

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Mary L
9/3/2013 01:07:55 am

I agree that a no tolerance policy on bullying is, for the most part, ineffective; I also believe no-tolerance is in many cases against a student's learning proper behavior and often perpetuates bullying or even exacerbates it. I found that changing the culture of the school was much more effective, not always popular with the staff and certainly not easy, especially when I tried to work with a bully individually to change his/her behavior rather than castigating him/her. Bullying is probably always going to be around--I'm dealing with one right now AT MY AGE!! Who would have known?? (No, it's not Nancy!) I think there has to be accountability with a kid who is involved in bully behavior, but different circumstances require different approaches. (I loved your comment about Mike's dirty looks.) Some forms of bullying, especially at the high school level, are done through social media and addressing that was the closest I came to implementing “no-tolerance”. That type of bullying is very cowardly, nasty and completely pre-planned. Unfortunately, it is also very effective and hard to handle. However, working with the kid individually was still the best approach as part of accountability. I was pretty strong about getting the parents and teachers involved in finding constructive approaches to changing behaviors. We also tried multi-faceted approaches to changing behavior. I also found that the legal requirements were much less than effective on most forms of bullying; however at the secondary level, sometimes they helped. Probably not so much at the elementary level. But, I also know that if strategies are not put in place with younger children, their behavior only gets worse and at the secondary level are often very dangerous and sometimes deadly.

It sounds as if your book should be required reading for the faculty--you might want to get your Principal on board as a way to start a school-wide approach to bullying that is focused on changing bad behaviors into positive ones. I found a school-wide approach focused on respect was quite effective. But you need the commitment of the entire faculty and administration to make it work; and it takes consistency. There is another book, Sticks and Stones, which addresses this topic at the high school level--if nothing else, it shows how explosive unchecked bullying at the earlier levels can be.

Reply
Mary
4/25/2014 09:25:14 pm

I would never teach the old mantra words can never hurt me. Words do hurt. I suggest you look up No Name Calling Week.

Reply
Laurie link
4/25/2014 11:50:29 pm

Thanks for your comment, Mary. I certainly wasn't advocating for name-calling in return; in fact, I do a specific lesson on this in my "conflict escalator" unit. I haven't actually gone as far as to teach any of the phrases I mentioned, but I still stand behind the idea that the best way to combat other people's hurtful words is to not allow them to have any power.

As it happens Ray Mathis coincidentally (?) wrote this on LinkedIn last night on a post of his I had commented on. I think he makes the point considerably more eloquently than I did:

"When I I was a kid, kids would say “I know you are, but what am I?”, “I’m rubber, you’re glue, what you say bounces off me, and sticks to you”, or “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Other kids would hurl insults at someone, and they’d just laugh and keep repeating that. And as long as they did, no one could hurt them. But the second they started thinking, or saying out loud, “How dare you say that about me?”, or “You can’t call me that?” their suit of armor evaporated, and the other kids “got under their skin”. The point being that it’s really what we think in response to what happens , and what others say and do that really determines how we feel, not what they say or do.

I’m not suggesting we teach kids to say “I know you are but what am I?”, but I think we need to stop telling them someone can hurt their feelings, and they can hurt others too. If people feel hurt after others say things to them, that’s understandable, part of being human. But you can’t hurt feelings because it’s a electro-chemical event in the body with a pretty diffuse locus. The more scientific or semantically correct way to say that is that sometimes, but not always, because of what people choose to think about a person, themselves, and what others say or do, they will make themselves feel hurt.

I’ve always believed the 2.0 or adult version of the childhood strategies above would be something like, “You can think or say whatever you want. But it’s MY choice how I look at myself, and how I feel about myself. And you don’t get to make those choices for me. Unless I let you. And I choose not to.” That’s where we want kids to get attitudinally. Like Dr. Victor Frankl once said, our last freedom is our attitude. And Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your permission”

Every thought we have or comment we make is our personal theory or hypothesis about the way life is or should be. The greater the difference between those and reality, the more emotion we generate needlessly. IOW, the more we think in terms of opinions about life, the more likely we are to needlessly generate emotion. The more we think in terms of facts, the less. “You can’t say that about me” is a bogus theory to cling to in the face of bullying, because it greats a huge gap between your expectations never stops other kids, and even invites more of it. “I don’t like that and want you to stop” are both better. Still have emotion, but frustration and sadness instead of anger and depression. “You can’t say that about me” is an opinion, not a fact. However, “You can think and say whatever you want” is a fact, and good theory about life, that matches reality. “It’s my choice how I look at myself, and how I feel about myself” and the rest of that comment above are also facts, and reality. Most kids just haven’t realized it yet because they’ve been living their lives based on a lie, like most adults, that others can make us feel bad. And adults perpetuate that lie by the way they talk about bullying.

Imagine having an assembly of kids, with that comment on a huge screen, and after having explained why it’s true, having kids repeat that slowly out loud. And again and again. You would see and feel the empowerment build."

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    Laurie P. Mendoza, 
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    I've been an elementary school counselor in Massachusetts for almost 20 years, so have a lot of opinions on everything!

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  • Program Planning
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