In honor of National Bullying Prevention Month, I thought I would write an entry about this epidemic. Honestly, I have no idea where to begin. There are so many roles in bullying, and so little that can truly be done about it. All we can do as parents, adults and teachers is to try to instill empathy into our children. This is the tough part. From my own personal observations, I feel like empathy is lost by nature between the years 3 and 18. Before 3, it is natural, after 18 it is recognizable as a response to situations we have been involved in or witnessed.

I absolutely LOVE the natural, unforced, unscripted empathy I see in 2 years olds. Has anyone else noticed that? There is this little pocket of time between when a child learns to talk to when they learn to be sassy where they show extreme empathy. My daughter, Lilah, is there right now. She is absolutely instinctual with her empathy.

It is inevitable that I run into the corner of my bed at least one time a week, at least. Each time, I hit my thigh in the EXACT same spot and each time hurts just as badly as the time before, sometimes worse depending on the time between the last collision and the current one. Three days ago, just as my previous thigh bruise had dissolved, “boom!” I nailed it again, this time HARD! I immediate fell to the ground in what was for sure an over exaggerated response in order to get out of the nightly bathing of the kids duty, but still, it did hurt.

“OWWWWWWW” I screamed just loud enough for Blake to hear me, but no so loud that it seemed fake.

Blake yelled from downstairs “What happened? I’ll be right up after I kill this boss.” (whatever that means in video game language).

“OWW OWW OWWWW!” I yelled louder in order to make sure he knew I wasn’t going to bathe the kids.

Immediately I hear someone coming up the steps. In my head I thought, “yes, he is coming to the rescue. Run the water!” It wasn’t long before I noticed that the sound I heard coming up the stairs wasn’t 195 pound steps coming up 5 steps at lightning speed, instead it was a step-thump-step-thump-step-thump sound approximately 14 times until I see the sweetest little 25 pounder rushing into my arms asking “mama, ok? mama, ok? hurt you? hurt you? awe awe mama awe.” She did not laugh, she teared up with me, poured her body on mine and wrapped her arms around me in genuine and sincere love and compassion. Now if we could just spread that around the world, we would all be just fine.

Don’t worry, it doesn’t take long for that shining characteristic to become few and far between. I am not saying that children are not prone to natural empathy. In fact, I think people who are empathetic are naturally that way. I think those who are not can learn strategies to be, but that natural instinct can’t be taught.

In my years in the classroom, I found myself drawn to my students with empathy. Sure, I taught the Behavior Intervention Program so it’s safe to say empathy wasn’t pouring out of my classroom, but it was there. I can promise you that. So much of the behavior I worked with was defensive. My kids were 1/2 and 1/2. They didn’t often play the role of the observer (I’ll get into this role later). My kids were either The Bully or The Bullied.

I truly believe That Bullies act out of defense. Often times, they target the children who have similar weaknesses or differences as them because it deflects the negative light from them. For example, let’s say The Bully is a little larger than average, but not fat. They can target someone even bigger than them which gives all of his followers a false sense of average thus taking the light off of his own weaknesses and selfishly using someone even more fragile than himself as his pawn to feel acceptance. This is one of many reasons kids bully. Other reasons include the need to be a leader in a world where they may not quite fit, lack of structure and foundation at home, *(some of the most empathetic children I have ever taught have come from the most broken and unstructured homes), or kids that are told by another bully to bully.

As for The Bullied, these are the kids who are unique, over achievers, quiet, short, fat, scarred, etc. These are the kids who, if they make it through their adolescent and teen years, go onto become our bosses, our presidents, our leaders and humanitarians. They are the kids who have unbreakable confidence to face the most difficult challenges in business, make the biggest sales, and lead worldwide initiatives. These children experience more adversity, silence and fear in their youthful years than human should have to experience, but they go on to move mountains. Parents of The Bullied, hold on tight, love and protect your children, build them up, love them unconditionally because one day, not too far from now, they WILL be ok. They will be better than OK.

Then there is The Observer. Hand’s down one of the trickiest roles to play. In essence, they can do the right thing, and make an adult aware of the situation thus becoming the snitch and the next victim for The Bully or they can remain silent, lose sleep at night over what they saw and didn’t tell, but then be on Team Bully, a team which they have no desire to be on, but are almost forced upon (I know this is a run-on sentence but I didn’t breath when I wrote it, so I felt like it was an excusable grammatical error). I feel for The Observer. People say they are just as much at fault as The Bully, I wholeheartedly disagree. They are a lose-lose position. The way they process it, handle it and the actions they take or do not take will be pivotal in their personal character building.

All in all, Bullying is an epidemic. As teachers, friends, parents and loved ones, there is so little we can do. Because unlike the defiant behavior I typically post about, this behavior is sneaky, not often seen, masked with fear from the victim, not heard or not acted upon because of so many “crying wolves” and overuse of the term. I think the main thing we can do is teach our children as best as we can to be good human beings.

I’ll never forget when I was made aware of being empathetic. Blake and I were headed out to one of our first dates. It was winter of 2006. We got out of the car and started walking hand-in-hand to the movie theater on a Friday night. Just behind us was a sweet little man who was all alone. His head was down, and he looked lonely. I started to cry, I wanted him to go with us. I panicked because I knew Blake was in town to take ME out, not me and the sweet, little stranger. I couldn’t resist asking him to join us, a move that showed him acceptance and compassion. A move that showed Blake who I was before he committed his life to me. A move that hopefully made a difference. Do one thing every day for someone else.

Ultimately, the world will have to naturally become more empathetic before we see major changes. I do think that each one of us can make a difference. We have to listen to our children. For the younger ones, we have to dissect their stories and self-identify what may be bullying. Often kids between the ages of 4-9 have no idea that someone is being bullied or that they are bullying others. If you get a call that you child has been bullying, don’t jump to the defense, rather accept it with appreciation, and teach right from wrong in a world where that area can be so grey.

Advocate for you children and other’s children. Keep the awareness going. Let’s continue to collaborate to extinguish this horrible behavior that has grown exponentially over time.

I am glad to see popular tween artists doing songs like the one below. Thank you Matty B! This is one step in the right direction!