Today at Live On Purpose TV, a topic that I'm not very excited about. Bullying has
become a huge problem. We've got to do something about this.
As a parent,
bullying is probably something that you've thought about as it relates to
your kids. Maybe you have memories of your own experience with this. It's
become a much bigger problem now in our information age. Because the information
can travel so quickly. Someone could be bullied in school "A" over here and
everybody in school "B" knows about it before class is out. That's one of the
problems that we're dealing with because it travels so quickly. So, what are we
gonna do about this bullying? You might notice the shirt that I'm wearing has a
logo on it for NOVA Principles. I've been involved
with NOVA Principles for quite some time now, I'm actually one of the founders of
the program and this is something that we've worked on in NOVA. For those of you
who are unfamiliar with what NOVA is we train police officers and deputies in
sheriff's departments to go into schools and teach kids a curriculum that
includes some things about bullying. We've also got some of the traditional
alcohol and other drug education and awareness that helps these kids to make
better choices. One of the distinctions that we make in the NOVA program is that
there are different levels of bullying. In fact, we use that as a general term.
Let's break it down into some more specific terms. Some kids, maybe all kids,
are going to tease each other, right? It's just a normal part of childhood, that's
not what we're talking about, we're not talking about the friendly, good-natured,
good humor kind of teasing and pranks that can happen as a natural part of
childhood, that's not what we're talking about here. When we move beyond that into
something that is more mean-spirited, in fact,
let's take teasing for a minute. Teasing could be either friendly and playful or
mean-spirited meaning that it intends to tear someone down or to cause them to
feel uncomfortable rather than being good-natured and
playful. So mean-spirited teasing, now I'm going to use bullying as a separate
concept that involve either assault or destruction of property or some kind of
extortion, you know, like the bully who beats up the
kid or holds him hostage for his lunch money. Okay, that's what we're talking
about. Bullying is it a level that the behavior is illegal in its nature.
Assault, stealing, property destruction, extortion, those kinds of things are what
I'm referring to when I say bullying and that's a little higher level than
mean-spirited teasing. This is important to acknowledge because we're going to
handle them a little differently. Now either of them mean-spirited teasing or
bullying, we don't want to have happening and it's potentially dangerous and
hurtful to kids, at least psychologically, sometimes physically. What are we going to
do with mean-spirited teasing? Actually, this works with any kind of teasing but
I want to share with you a concept that I learned years ago called the tickle
factor. Sound fun? Yeah. What happens when you tickle somebody? When you get in
there and they're just really super ticklish, okay, and you start to
tickle them, what happens? They freak out and that's what makes it so darn fun,
right? Because you get a little sense of power that you can push buttons and and
do a little manipulation there and they lose it, that's what makes tickling fun.
Have you ever tried to tickle someone who's not ticklish? So you come in at
that little hands and they're like.. That's weird. What are
you doing? And then you feel awkward because it's not fun to tickle
someone who's not ticklish. The tickle factor can help us with
teasing, whether it's mean-spirited teasing or even playful teasing.
The reason people do it is to get the reaction right so to deal with that or
to stop it or to discourage it from happening, we simply take away the
reaction, we do not respond in the way that they are hoping that we will. That's
kind of like paying them off, okay. So with that mean-spirited teasing, and this
is not easy, okay, not easy to take away the reaction
but that's the most effective way that I know to end the teasing. Now let's go to
the bullying because like I said, that is a whole other level and this is a really
troubling problem in many of our schools today. First of all, a little shout out to
one of my friends, Jeanie Cisco-Meth who wrote a book called Bully Proofing You.
She's actually got some really nice practical ideas in this book about how
to handle bullying. I interviewed Jeannie on my podcast and
we'll put a little link in the description right down there below so
that you can listen to what Jeannie had to say. Lots of practical ideas that I
won't take the time to share with you here in this video. Here's where I come
down on bullying, it's not okay. It is not okay to hurt or intimidate or threaten
or steal from or destroy the property of other people, that's not okay so we need
to take a strong stance against that and my strong personal preference in dealing
with bullying is that we handle it head-on, that we do not allow it to
become the manipulation that it often is in especially our kids lives. So this
involves a skill set of being able to probably, first of all, break the silence
about it. A lot of times, bullying comes with threats about telling okay because
they don't want to get in trouble, right? But that is exactly the power that we
have against the bully because they are the ones who are breaking the law.
Assault is against the law, so is stealing, so is hurting anyone in
any way, that's against the law. So who do you who do you tell? Parents who are
listening and watching, please be the kind of parent that your child can come
to to tell you if something like this is going on and let's have the courage to
make it known to the authorities, that might mean the police, that might mean
the personnel at the school, we have to make it known so that it can be handled
in an appropriate way. That's how we're going to deal with bullying. Now beyond
that, there's a lot of skill sets that we can use in terms of communication and
resistance and self-defense, there's all kinds of things that can be learned and
I'm really an advocate of those things. For a child to learn some basic things
about self-defense, that just increases their confidence, it makes it less likely
that they're going to be confronted by a bully. To have some communication skills
that allow them to assertively call someone on their behavior and put them
on notice. I remember, I was working with a junior high kid not too long ago, there
was a bullying situation going on and we practiced here in the office, we
practiced some wording that said, "The way you are treating me is not acceptable
and if it happens again I will report you."
Bullies aren't expecting to hear that kind of a thing and there's other ways
to word it, obviously, depending on the context but let's empower our children
to take care of themselves and to have some skills that will allow them to
handle these kinds of threats in a way that is productive and that they can
keep moving forward. Bullying is not okay. It's a tough problem but I think
as we work together, we're going to make some progress with this bullying
issue. So glad that you're here and that you're part of the conversation.