Bullying is a topic near and dear to my heart. I am a Girl Scout leader, and the main reason I became one was to work with my daughter and her peers BEFORE they got to the middle school age where they would start being mean to each other.
Boy was I naive...and how much I have learned!
Updated: I am taking the "girls" out of the title, since several men have responded with comments that led me to think my title was not consistent with the feelings the diary is evoking. I don't have time to update the entire diary at the moment, but just change everything in the diary to say "kids" instead of "girls".
The current rec listed diary is fabulous, and correct in the notion that we have to get rid of the idea that "kids will be kids". It's just not ok to terrorize someone in any form or fashion.
Then we need some understanding of how it happens and adults need to realize how much their own history with bullying plays into what happens with kids. How we react has much to do with our memories of seeing or being or participating in bullying.
We need to recognize that bullying has different forms:
Boys generally bully physically. The bigger, tougher, pick on the smaller, weaker. It is, for the most part physical and because of that it is visible, and more easily identified. This is not to say that boys don't use other forms, but physical is the predominate form.
But I want to focus on Girls. Girls general bully emotionally. The "experts" call it "relational aggression" and what it means is that girls use emotions and feelings to taunt, threaten and exclude those they deem socially undesirable. Yes, exclusion is a form of bullying. This is not to say that girls don't use physical aggression, but it's not the predominant form.
Every bullying sitution has 3 parties:
The "target" or person being bullied
The "aggressor" or bully
The "witness" or bystanders who can influence the outcome of the event. Adults who witness children in acts of aggression (physical or emotional) play a particularly important role because as a witness, they have an empowerment that they can choose to exercise (or not, unfortunately in many cases).
The tricky part about the adult involvement, is that we all have our own history with bullying, so we bring those feelings and memories into the equation. And what we really, really need to realize is that EVERYONE WILL, AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIVES, PLAY EACH OF THE THREE ROLES. But what usually happens, is that we sympathize with the victim (because we understand what it feels like to be victimized) and we get angry with the bully (because we are embarassed to admit we'd ever treat someone that way).
I can illustrate this with describing an event I attended that was put on by an outside organization for about 80 women who are involved in Girl Scouts. After going through the above definitions, the moderator asked us to break up into groups of three, and within that group to designate who would be the target, the bully, the witness. We all thought we knew what was coming, right? we'd be asked to role play some situations and then strategize what to do about them. Wrong! We were asked to tell a story to the other two about a time in our lives when we had been in that role. It was a very powerful exercise and taught me several things:
~it illustrated the idea that everyone has played all three roles
~it illustrated and enlightened about how much guilt the women were carrying over the acts of bullying that they had committed as children because EVERY SINGLE STORY TOLD OF BEING THE BULLY was from a childhood situation, and everyone was carrying tremendous guilt over it. I have since done this exercise in other groups and had the same result.
~it illustrates how our own reactions to bullying among children are reflective of what we experienced as kids.
~it taught me that in working with kids, it is as important to be understanding and sympathetic with the bully as it is with the victim. Think what it would mean to eliminate the future guilt of all those girls.
So how do we use this?
First and foremost, adults MUST recognize that we have to TEACH our children how to treat each other. We teach them to tie their shoes and we teach them their multiplication tables, but then we send them out to playgrounds and ballfields and dance classes and life and leave them to sink or swim, to make and keep friends because kids will be kids. This is not realistic nor constructive. At the elementary where my kids used to go, the school hired two women to work at recess supervising 150 kids at a time. The teachers don't go out, so they don't know what is happening. The recess teachers can do little more than keep physical fighting from happening, and that is not where the damage is happening with girls. My daughter was involved in a bullying situation that the teachers didn't know about because it was happening at recess. Instead, the teacher called me in to figure out why my daughter was crying in class. It never occurred to her that it was because my daughter was so unhappy at school.
Second, we have to stop bullying in our own lives. Yes, adults do this all the time. Next time you are at a little league game, or at a PTA meeting, or a work conference listen and think to yourself, if my child heard this conversation, what would they be learning about how to treat people? And in our homes, we need to think about how we talk about those who are different than us, those who we disagree with, etc. Are we doing that with respect? Are we making sure to point out that while we may disagree with someone, that doesn't make them stupid, or worthless. Children model the behavior they see aroudn them and parents play an enormous role in this. And don't forget extended family either. I don't routinely take my children around my brother who is a bully and consequently, they have not grown up with the relentless teasing that is all I remember about my childhood. And at work, and in every situation we are in ourselves, we need to remember we are modeling behavior for children.
Third, we have to be "empowered witnesses" in every situation. Kids know the right words, they know that they are not supposed to treat others badly, but much of the time they don't really realize that they are being a bully, and so we must point it out to them in an instructive way. My daughter was playing with two younger girls on the playground recently while my son was playing baseball. One of the younger girls came back and told her mom that the "girl told me I couldn't play with them anymore". The mom did nothing but said, come sit by me. I looked at the little girl and said, come on, let's go see what's up? And she was afraid to confront them. But I went over and said to both my daughter and the other girl, what's up? My daughter said, Alexa told her she couldn't play. Alexa knew she was wrong, I could see from her attitude, but I directed my comments to both of them, and I said, very nicely, do you know that you really hurt her feelings? How would you feel if someone told you that you couldn't play? It's not ok to treat someone that way. My daughter got up and went and asked the girl to play. Later, I talked to her about being the older one in the situation and that she herself has a responsibility to call out other kids when this happens.
For many girls, just pointing out that "exclusion is bullying" is an eye opener. With my Girl Scout troop, we have done various activities around this, but the most successful thing was once on a campout, the girls were all gathered around a table having a snack. A couple of us adults told them we were going to do some skits. We ad-libbed some situations of bullying, teasing each other, excluding each other. The girls stopped us and told us what we were doing was wrong, and then the floodgate broke. They all had stories to tell, questions to ask (even my most drama queen of girls raised her hand and asked, is it bullying when you tell someone you won't be their friend if they don't do what you want...uh, yes, actually it is...she was shocked to find out she herself was a bully sometimes!). We found that they had all the right words, but they didn't know how to use them or how to speak up in a certain situation. Doing skits with them gave them the opportunity to strategize, to "practice" what to do if their friend was being picked on, and even just defined some gray areas for them.
We have to recognize that with girls it starts very young. The situation I described above, Alexa is 7. The bullying my daughter got in elementary school was in 3rd grade. Many times we think of this as a high school or middle schoool problem, but it starts much,much younger, and because the damage is emotional in girls, it can last for a very long time. We have to start younger, and get more involved in what they are doing and thinking and feeling on a daily basis.
We have to teach them how to treat each other from the cradle on.
But if you listen to the media and rhetoric in this country, we have to ask ourselves, if we don't treat each other better than we do, what should we really expect from the children who are watching, listening and learning from us?