I remember hearing once that instead of calling them bullies, we should call them cowards. And while I won’t take on that argument today, I will say that I think the adults who turn their heads to bullying are the real cowards.
I will never excuse the behavior of a child bully, but I do recognize they are kids. I have hope that they will do better. But, what about an adult who does know better? I can’t excuse them turning their heads, helping cover up, or intimidating a family into silence. That behavior should be the crime because it is what has, over time, developed a deep culture of fear and silence around the issue. It is what has pushed kids to the places they should never go and it has left parents without their children.
As I think about our efforts to help other kids, I have come to see that the silence becomes deafening. At first, people are on board. They see the wrong, but then they become afraid and disappear. They become fearful their own child will either become the focus of the bully or the victim of retaliation from school officials or the other parents. While a person’s inaction may seem insignificant, the truth is it has built and supported a veil of fear.
Last week while talking to what I thought was an anti-bullying activist, I was struck by a comment he made. When I challenged his role as an activist for the child, he told me his job was do what was right. So, then I thought “what is right?” How do we know what is right? What is right for the school may be very different than what is right for the child. So, what do we do then? Do we pick the school over the child?
He also said that there are “two sides to every story.” So again, I have to ask. If a school and a child have very different stories to tell about a bullying situation, who do we believe? The school or the child? Do we believe the principal, the teacher, an adult who is trusted and respected, or do we believe an 8 year old? It makes me wonder. It makes me sad and it makes me angry because I think we don’t believe the kids enough. We don’t try to help them. We push them away. We want it to go away. We don’t want people to think we have unsafe schools. We don’t want parents to think we have bullying problems.
I myself have heard a school board official tell me that when there is no evidence and the bully denies hitting a child, that they choose to believe both. How can you believe both? Doesn’t that really say you don’t believe the child who has come to you for help?
Many times our children aren’t getting help they need, and many times they don’t even ask for it. And, from our experiences, there seems to be two common reasons: they don’t want the bullying experience to get worse and they don’t think anyone will help them. We have heard from parents from as far as New Jersey and the story is almost always the same. Whether in our hometown of Paducah, Kentucky, Ohio, or Washington state – they don’t feel heard by their schools. They either didn’t go to the school at all or they felt dismissed. I believe we have a real disconnect between parents and our schools as it relates to bullying incidents. I believe most schools are eager to assist but for some reason parents aren’t going to them. Why is that and what can we do to change it?
We aren’t asking schools to unfairly punish someone accused of bullying. What we are asking for is that we begin to hear the voices of the millions of kids who need help.
The older I get, the fewer people I see who are truly willing to stand up for what is right. To me, “right” is very clear. And, on many days I will admit I am afraid. I am very afraid. My voice may waver but it will not be silent.
I have some unique takes on bullies. I feel like I have a strong understanding of their orientations, but I don’t often get a chance to put them on display for feedback, so please let me know if my personal conclusions hit the mark or not.
To your point about whether bullies are cowards for not.
As we define bullies today, they are definitely cowards. If they were not cowards, they would not be bullies, but just jerks. A Jerk doesn’t have as much power as bully because enough is known about the jerk. The jerk is brave enough to say this is who I am, publicly. Maybe they don’t say it nice, but you definitely can figure out where they stand on many issues because you know them and their jerky ways.
A bully is a special kind of jerk because of their cowardice. A bully publicly misrepresent themselves in a variety of ways. They avoid getting caught by witnesses that they can’t bully, they lie to escape accountability, they maintain the illusion of good character when advantageous, and they may also get their parent to run interference for them. There are many more ways that they use and abuse to avoid detection of who and what they really are.
We all have elements of our life that we don’t stand up and say, “This is who I am!” because maybe we’re not particularly proud of that element of who we are. A bully creates a victim and a target and then will not stand up and say yeah “That’s who I am. I victimized them.” They don’t refrain from proclaiming who they are because they’re not proud, but rather because they cannot take the “hits” from society through accountability. They do not have the strength to be a jerk. Even a jerk has self-worth. A bully does not. They are filled with self-doubt and rely on the false sensation of worth they get by controlling others through bullying to push back their personal sensations of self-doubt.
To your point about schools that cannot identify a bully and what is “right.”
In a situation where school cannot determine that a bully did indeed act inappropriately, there is still something that can be done. Schools will need to discuss what is right by discussing what is wrong. When a child has been accused of bullying, the school official needs to describe the behavior in the accusation and ask that child if that type of behavior is acceptable. The official should explore in multiple ways the bad behavior and allow the child to repeatedly condemn the different descriptions of the outlined behavior. It’s important that the official separate the behavior from the bully and allow the bully to just judge the behavior itself. A bully has to condemn the behavior to keep his bully cover, and thus loses some ground in his bullying realm. This narrows the options for a bully in the future, now that the bully has to live up to the behavior that they are on record (at least with that person.) It doesn’t mean they’ll stop bullying, but it will shrink their bullying universe. Now a bully thinks that a significant person of authority is watching at a minimum for the discussed behavior. There is a caveat. This approach addresses behavior and not character. If it were to yield results, it’s likely to drive a person into a suppression type mode. In that case it is not resolve the root cause issue.
I could go on and on, but I think I’ll stop here.
Thanks for your work in this realm!
I really like your aeticle. There are parents it there that are scared. They are scared of retaliation for their kids and themselves. I’m the type of parent that does stand up. From what I have seen that’s very rear to see in schools. I’ve had incidents at my children’s school. I have gone to the teacher, principal, and even the district. I have seen that it’s a lot of red tape and there are parent who don’t want to take that extra step. I have talked to parents who had the same in sident of a teacher putting her hand on their 1st graders and parents telling the principal. They even have told me that the principal nor the office people don’t do anything about it. So, they leave it about alone. I’m the type of parent that had that same incident last your in May 2014. I spoke with staff at school, the teacher, the principal. I didn’t stop there I would take the extra step to take it to the district with the Superintendent even reporting it to the police. To this date I’m still waiting for a reply but that doesn’t stop me to continue fighting for what I know is right. The principal has spoken to other parents and has confirmed this teachers behavior. But, I guess there are those who don’t want to take that extra step to try to fix things. And those people who just talk to talk and don’t act and take actions those are the ones who are the cowards. Schools don’t want to think they have a problem or maybe they know they have a problems. Sometimes they just don’t know what to do because they say thay are not trained. But, when you think about it. When you see a child and speak to that child and see and hear what that child is saying. You don’t have to be trained to know what to do. We need more parents to take that extra step. We the adults are here to protect our children no matter how many steps, if we are the ones with a title on our forehead, or that parent that the school will see as a problem parent. We parents need to stand up for our kids. Like I said once. The teachers have the school and their unions to protect them. The school has the district with their attorneys to protect them. Know…who’s there protecting OUR kids? We the patents are our children’s voice. We need to use to protect our children and we have to use our voice for them not to just hear us but, listen to us. I personally know there are parents out there that are scared. But they shouldn’t be. They have the pow scared to help.
“I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.” – Rosa Parks {Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)}