WHAT TO DO WITH THE BULLIES?



Here is a subject near and dear to my heart. Growing up I was a scrawny, painfully shy kid, just the perfect combination to serve as fodder for the bullies in Tacoma, Washington in the late 1950's. Unfortunately for me my father was a WWII veteran of five campaigns in Italy and he believed you stood and fought your way out of just about any situation in life, so there were many, many days when I would come home from school bruised and leaking blood. And that was at a Catholic school. Thank God I didn't attend a public school in those days; I might not have survived.

The good news is that I did survive; the bad news is that bullying is alive and well in our nation today and I'll be honest with you, I don't think you're going to see the end of it anytime soon. I can't even begin to suggest that I know the reasons for bullying, but of course I'll take a shot at it regardless of my lack of training in the behavioral sciences. I've always believed that bullies act out against others because of a deep-rooted inferiority complex. As long as a bully can make someone else feel inferior then they can climb out of their own pit of inferiority for a little while. The other cause of bullying that I have seen during my years in a classroom is abuse at home, whether that abuse takes the form of physical, mental, emotional or sexual. The abused will inevitably strike out against someone else and that someone else will often be a classmate of smaller stature.

What to do? Since this has been going on probably as long as kids have interracted with other kids, I think it's safe to assume it will continue. The administration at your child's school really is fairly powerless in a bullying situation, at least in the early going. It becomes a matter of he said, she said. If the teacher does not actually see the bullying taking place there is not much that can be done. Sure, the teacher can sit down with the offending student and have a heart to heart, but it's been my experience that those talks only serve to raise the blood pressure of the teacher. Only catching the bully in the act can assure that he/she will be punished and then we are talking about an ineffectual way of dealing with the student. Give a bully time after school for five days and on the sixth that bully will find another helpless victim and release a little frustration. It is inevitable.

I could tell you that most of the families in America need family counseling but why bother. Like that's really going to happen! Nope, here's a case where my dear old dad was pretty right on. Pain is the greatest motivator I know, and a bully feels pain just as much as his victim. Oh, I can hear the screams from the cheap seats right now. In today's society it is politically incorrect to suggest that kids work it out themselves and that it is entirely possible that there might have to be some blood shed in a situation like this, but you know what? There might have to be some blood shed in a situation like this. We just might have to teach our kids that it's alright for them to stand up for themselves.

My son was being bullied in elementary school, which was amazing because he was one of the biggest kids in his class. But he was a mild, gentle child and he simply didn't know what to do when confronted with bullying. One day I pulled him aside and told him that there is nothing more painful than getting hit on the nose. He looked at me like I had told him to commit murder and he also said he would get punished at school for fighting. I calmly pointed out that the punishment at school for fighting was two hours after school and wouldn't that punishment be worth it if he stopped Chad from bullying him? Next day there was Chad pushing my son against his locker; unfortunately for Chad this episode didn't quite work out the way he had planned and within thirty seconds of the push Chad was headed for the office with a bloody nose and my son happily accepted his punishment. I might point out that my son was never bothered by Chad again.

I know for a fact that if the helpless rose up against the bullies then there would no longer be bullies. I'd like to see every school have a Victims Club. They could have a president and a vice-president and at each members only meeting they could discuss recent bullying and what the group is going to do about it. Let me repeat that....what the GROUP is going to do about it. Imagine the beautiful symmetry of it all.....out on the playground during recess, twenty victims of bullying confront the bully responsible for their collective sleepless nights. The Chads still out there on the playgrounds of America would disappear overnight.

Don't try to thank me. Victims of the world, UNITE!

Bill Holland