- Stop crying, is not the thing to say.
This is how to empower your child
against bullying.
"Mended Light".
(upbeat music)
So how do you empower your child against bullying?
I'm Jonathan Decker, licensed therapist.
This is "Ask a Therapist."
And I was bullied really, really bad as a child.
I wanna tell you a little bit about my story
and some things that my mom did to help me
to get to a place where bullies couldn't really get to me.
But first of all, I, from a young age,
I wanted to be accepted,
I wanted to be funny,
I wanted to be the life of the party,
I wanted everyone to like me,
and so I tried really, really hard
to make other people laugh,
and to be the center of attention.
- Fun.
- And that was annoying as heck for everyone around me.
Just a lot of swing-and-a-miss jokes
that made everyone uncomfortable,
and they felt sorry for this little kid
who so clearly wanted to be loved.
I mean, I was basically Michael Scott.
- Be when you grow up?
- I wanna be married and have 100 kids
so I can have 100 friends
and no one can say no to being my friend.
- I was basically Michael Scott from "The Office"
and it led to me getting this really sad,
heartbreaking nickname, which was Ste-boy,
as in strike, right?
You tell a terrible joke and it's a strike.
Somebody came up with that and then everybody laughed,
and then that person got the glory and the laughs
that I wanted and what I got was Ste-boy.
And I started to eat my feelings,
which is a heck of a thing for like a six year old to do,
seven year old to do,
but I would come home cause kids would tease me
for being not funny, for being lame,
for trying so hard and being so clearly desperate
for acceptance and for friends,
and I come home and my mom would have fresh baked cookies,
and she'd be like, "what happened?"
And I'd be like, "the kids are so mean,
they call me Butterball"
because I started to put on weight,
and kids started calling me Butterball.
And so I was known in elementary school as the fat,
not funny kid,
the whole literally picked last for all the sports games
because I had terrible, terrible hand-eye coordination.
I finally found a group of friends
who my literal role in that friend group
was to be the punching bag.
They literally kept me around so they could tease me
and make fun of me.
- Bully, bully, bully, bully.
- And it was a very lonely way grow up.
And then my brother, who is eight years older,
we're close now and he's a great man.
He was a terrible brother and as did in childhood
and when he was a teenager and I was a kid,
he'd be the first to tell you that.
And so literally I was safe with my mom,
which is about the epitome of sad
when you're being bullied as a child as well.
I got my mom and there was a kid who made it his mission
to torment me because I guess I was an easy target.
And because he could be cool in front of his friends
and get them to laugh by making me cry on the playground.
It's a sad thing,
and they say, we should be more like children,
but children can be terrible.
And it's a really sad thing to be that young
and to feel unwelcome and unwanted everywhere you go.
And then of course, it just feeds the cycle
'cause the more I felt unwelcome and unwanted,
the harder I tried to be the funny guy,
the life of the party, 'cause those guys have friends,
except for nobody laughed at my jokes.
And so then they all just tease me more.
And then I eat my feelings and I get fatter.
And like the whole thing just went round and round.
But this kid, he made it his mission to make me miserable,
and birthday parties
he pushed me into the pool fully clothed,
even all these years later, it's decades later,
it's still painful.
But I remember telling my mom how awful he was
and I wanted her to call his mom to set him straight,
and she had this idea,
of turning your enemies into friends,
and I'm like, "oh mom, that's a terrible idea."
She says, "why don't we have him over
and we'll take him out for ice cream?"
So my mom called his mom,
and instead of telling her what a terrible kid her son was
says, "we'd like to have him over,
we wanna take him out for ice cream."
And we all went out and my mom just talked to the kid
about who are you?
What are your interests?
What are you into?
Oh, it turns out John likes that video game too
and back and forth,
and I don't think she chewed the kid out.
I do remember her taking the time
for him to see who I really was.
And it's interesting, I'm not saying this is the solution,
this may be a terrible idea in your circumstance,
but in my circumstance, he didn't bully me again after that.
Now, in some cases you can't kill them with kindness.
In some cases, that's not gonna work.
And every family is gonna have different values.
Do you walk away from a fight?
Do you not start a fight,
but you're gonna stand up for yourself, right?
What does this look like?
You have to explore the pros and cons
of the different approaches.
But the fact is, telling on kids,
getting teachers involved, getting parents involved,
that can be helpful, people can intervene,
but the most helpful thing is empowering your child
to love themselves and to see the good in themselves,
and to see their value,
and to see that the behavior of a bully
is really about the bully,
it's not about the person who's being bullied,
that bullies crave acceptance,
they crave love, they crave adulation,
they crave power and that they pick on people
because of the things that they want.
And that bullies generally,
yeah, they may feel like happy
because only have friends who are unpopular,
but they miss out on actual connection.
They miss out on actual relationships
because actual relationships
are built on kindness and decency.
Of course, you know, if they're a kid
that's all, they might be all abstract concepts,
so how do we go more concrete?
I started to look for other kids who were bullied.
I started to look for other kids who look sad and lonely
because they'd often just be satelliting around
by themselves.
And I, instead of trying to get in with the popular kids,
I started to reach out to them, right,
I started to befriend them because I knew what that was.
And we started to collect people,
the freaks and geeks like that old TV show,
we started to collect people.
And this is a lesson I've learned in life
that our pain empowers us to help other people.
It helps us to be more compassionate
towards what other people are going through.
And I knew what it was to be bullied, to be rejected,
to be sad and to be lonely.
And so I started to reach out to those kids
and they were safe with me,
they could be at home with me.
And we built a group that grew and grew and grew
through middle school and through high school,
until by his senior year of high school,
there were a couple hundred kids in that group.
And the group was "Come as you are".
We had people who were jocks,
we had people who were theater people,
we had people who were chess people,
we had people who were music people,
all sorts of interests, all sorts of,
and there was no judgment,
even to the point
where some of the quote, unquote cool and popular kids,
abandoned ship because their friend groups were idiots,
and they wanted to hang out with people
who were having fun and staying out of trouble.
Empower your kids to use their pain
to connect with other people who are in pain,
and to have a place of safety and a refuge.
Empower your kids to see that the bullies behavior
is a reflection on the bully not on them.
Empower your kids to see that,
yes, you love them because you're their parent,
but also because you're their parents,
you have a front row seat every day to who they are,
and you know them better than anybody else.
You don't love them just because you're their parents.
You love them because you see in them
specific things that are worthy of love,
build your child up with specific praise
so that they know
it's not just some vague parent child love,
but that they are seeing that they are valued,
and encourage them in their talents,
encourage them in their interests,
and spend honestly,
some of it has to just be endured, right?
We can talk to,
we've got parent teacher conferences,
and we can talk to the parents of the bullies,
and we can get the schools involved,
we can do all sorts of things,
but that's a band-aid.
Some of it gets better if you turn bullies into friends.
Some of it gets better
if you reach out to people who are sad,
some of it just doesn't go away
because there are jerks in school,
and then there are jerks in adult life, right?
And so prepare them to endure it well.
And the best way to endure
is my value is not determined by people who are cruel.
My value is not determined by people
who spend their time looking for things
to tear down other people.
My value is not determined by people
who are terrible judges of character,
and just about everything else.
Learning to not put stock in the opinion of bullies
is liberating and it is freeing.
Now we've got, if you were bullied as a child,
or if your kids are being bullied,
or if you're being bullied as an adult,
we've got a free trauma resource
to help you through the process of healing.
Go in the description,
we've got a link there for you to click on.
It's just a free resource that we wanna offer to you.
And to that point, I wanna direct you to our next video,
"How to get traumatic images out of your head."
Now, what have you done to deal with bullies in your life?
Or how have you helped your kids with the bullies in theirs?
Sound off in the comments below.
What questions would you like me to answer
in our next "Ask a therapist" video?
Again sound off in the comments below.
If your child is being bullied,
as someone who's been there, it sucks.
It still affects me to this day,
but it doesn't drag me down.
I've got a good life and I'm happy with who I am,
and I love who I am.
Help your children keep their eye on the long ball, right?
The long game that there is so much more
and that it does get better.
I'm Jonathan Decker with "Mended Light".
Keep shining your light because we need it.
And I'll see you next time.
And here it comes.
(upbeat music)
Right there.
Here's the video, I told you it'd be here,
and I told the truth
because I'm not a bully, bullies lie,
but friends, friends tell the truth.