by Miranda Nelson
Georgia Straight
April 25, 2013

Bullying is NOT an epidemic; it’s a behaviour that can be changed. That distinction is one that Emily Bazelon would like people to remember.

“Most kids don’t do it and most kids don’t like it,” says Bazelon, senior editor for Slate and author of the recent book Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy.

“I think the reason bullying’s getting so much attention, in part, is because the Internet has changed how kids bully,” Bazelon told the Straight on the phone from her office in New Haven, Connecticut. “That’s interesting to explore, but the notion that it’s everywhere is problematic.”

Bazelon begins Sticks and Stones with the true stories of three American students: Monica, who eventually left school due to harassment; Jacob, a gay teenager who sued his school over the bullying he endured; and Flannery, a teen who faced criminal charges after a peer committed suicide.

Through their experiences, Bazelon illuminates the differences between bullying—verbal or physical abuse that repeats over time and involves a power imbalance—and more typical interpersonal conflicts between children.

“There’s both still a problem of kind of underpolicing for bullying and adults turning a blind eye to kids but also at the same time a problem of overpolicing,” Bazelon said. “In some places, adults, particularly parents, can kind of cry bullying about a conflict that’s really a two-way conflict and really not something where their child is the victim.”

But Bazelon also says the damage bullying can do to both instigators and victims can be lifelong.

“I think there’s a tendency to think…that this is a normal part of childhood and adversity makes us stronger.”

She points to a February 2013 study published online by JAMA Psychiatry that looked at bullies and victims over the course of 20 years and concluded that both parties experienced higher levels of anxiety and depressive disorders, suicidal thoughts, and panic disorder.

The key to ending bullying, in Bazelon’s view, is to foster empathy in individuals.

“One basic thing is to use stories, because kids really will respond to different characters and thinking about how a child in a book is being treated,” Bazelon said. “Sometimes it’s easier for them to see all the different sides and the way in which a kid is being wounded when it’s not a story that involves them directly.”

Bazelon said school administrators should be actively reminding students that bullying behaviour is atypical.

“When kids understand that—like, when a school takes an internal survey and then posts the results and shows that most kids don’t like bullying and don’t do it, they actually tend to see the rates [of bullying] go down more because then kids see this as an outlier behaviour,” Bazelon said.

Another simple way to teach empathy is for teachers to reward good behaviour whenever they see it instead of only responding to kids who act out. This concept, “positive behavioural interventions and supports”, which involves strategic data analysis and schoolwide support systems, has been adopted in more than 9,000 schools in the U.S.

In the end, prevention mostly comes down to proactive parenting, Bazelon said. “One question I ask myself is whether I’m too preoccupied with my kids’ [academic] achievement and happiness and not sending enough of a message to them that it’s just as important that they develop as morally sound individuals who have a sense of the collective good.”

Comments

Sandra Jones Ireland
Apr 25, 2013 at 10:54 am
Empathy is good,and needs to be taught and practiced.

And I also think that like many situations, children and adults should learn that being bullied should NOT be a secret. A bully will intimidate their victim(s) with threats with being called a ‘sissy’, ‘baby’, etc if the victim if the victim reports the bullying regardless of the methods used: In person, on the phone overy the internet.. and make the bullying into a “he/shesaid” sort of competition. Adding further “shame” that bullying is happening. IF the bullies of society and our culture know they will be reported, it might reduce the numbers of bullies. AS it is, I understand that with the bullying is intense indimidation and shame if the bullies are reported. Victims need to know that reporting bullying is the best cure to get it to stop, and that there is NO SHAME in reporting one o many incidents. Bullying should NOT be a “secret sport: which is how it is being treated and handled by the bullies. That is why it successfully continues.. REPORT it..Always. to stop it.

james green
Apr 25, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Bullying Adults are Creating Bullying Youth.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Bullying is a symptom of an adult society that bases much of what it does on bullying.
Until adults stop modeling our bullying ways our young will keep bullying.

Bullying is a symptom of an adult population that has largely forgotten manners, civility and caring for one another. In our business lives, sports and schools we teach that not being the best or a member of the winning team make one less.

We degrade our political opponents. We criticize our students and show pride in the ones who mirror our ideals and levels of academic excellence while criticism those who miss the mark.

We accept that punching, tackling, rough checking, kicking injuring, harming our sports opponents is fine and when our opponents are down it is okay to continue the attack MMA style.

We celebrate perpetrators of crime with the coverage they receive in the media while their victims are soon forgotten.

We cheer when players fight and boo the opposition in sports.

Allowing anonymity on online for those who harm others online is allowed and seemingly acceptable as it goes on and on.

Our laws and courts allow serious killers, and criminals limited and just sentencing and much of what our courts do protect the wrong doers.

We laugh when someone is called a geek or a nerd.

We form alliances with others who are like us and reject those who do not fit.

Insulting others through sarcasm and jokes is what we adults do in the media and at the breakfast table and at the water cooler.

We place money ahead of loyalty and image ahead of substance.

We show road rage and stick our finger up at each other in traffic.

We celebrate Dr. King’s words that tell us to judge others by the content of their character not the colour of their skin but do not practice it.

There are multiple cases of violence and bullying by men against women.

We emphasis the differences we have through our multicultural programs while forgetting what we have in common.

We allow with our consequences, haters and racists to make public and online statements of hate.
We sit while women and girls are trafficked and are marginalized in the media and in our communities.

These are all symptoms and until we understand the disease bullying will not be solved or lessoned.

The disease is we have lost our soul and love of self and our neighbour.

Read more:
http://www.straight.com/news/374976/empathy-key-ending-bullying

UFC Welterweight Champion, Georges St-Pierre talks with CBC Q’s Jian Ghomeshi on being bullied as a kid and how martial arts taught him self-confidence.