by James Burns | Oct 4, 2013 | Anti Bullying Tips, Bullies, Bully Proof Classroom, School Administrators, Teachers, The Bully Proof Classroom
While much of the focus of the anti-bullying movement is focused on the victims, there are many children who participate in bullying who need help as well. When parents learn that their child is involved in bullying another child, it can be a very difficult time for them. It is important to address this issue immediately to avoid further conflicts and worsening behavior.
The first step in helping your child with this difficult time, is to fully understand bullying and the possible causes of this behavior. Bullying often occurs as a result of a child feeling insecure. The act of bullying provides that child with a feeling of power and worth. Bullying can also be a result of a child’s lack of understanding that what they are doing is wrong, and it is often an outcome of emotional confusion brought on by anger, frustration or any number of things.
While addressing this issue with your child, it is important to be firm and let them know that there will be serious consequences if this behavior is continued, while also being as understanding as you possibly can. The first step is to analyze your home life and try to understand the roots of the issue. Improvement always starts at home, so make sure you are always doing your best to provide a good example regarding appropriate behavior. Make sure that they know that what they are doing is wrong and explain the reasons why.
To address the situation, start by opening the lines of communication between yourself and your child to understand why they are doing this. Do your best to learn about your child’s relationships and social lifestyle. Who they are and aren’t hanging out with can have a tremendous effect on their behavior. It is also often helpful to get in touch with your child’s friend’s parents, teachers, and school administration about the issue to gain insight into the behavior. Most importantly you should teach your child the values of treating others kindly, and provide a lot of positive reinforcement for good behavior.
There are many different causes of bullying and some are more obvious than others. Often times what children experience at home, whether it be physical altercations with siblings or yelling among parents and relatives, can have a negative effect on their behavior elsewhere. Speak to teachers, other faculty and coaches to get a sense of what might be causing your child’s behavior. If it seems like it may be caused by a difficulty controlling anger or other emotions, then seek the help of a health professional. It can be a slow and laborious process to help a child stop bullying, but doing so is sure to help them achieve joy and success in their personal and professional lives in the future.
Tyler Clark works for Liahona Academy and is an expert on bullying prevention.
by James Burns | Sep 20, 2013 | Anti Bullying Tips, Bullies, Bully Proof Classroom, Teachers, The Bully Proof Classroom, Washington Navy Yard\
Aaron Alexis
Tell me how we miss these people; enough already. Let’s start at the beginning: A general discharge from the Navy indicating eight to ten events of misconduct, a discharge that the system converted to an honorable discharge, arrested for shooting three bullets into a neighbors apartment, shot out three of his neighbors tires, admitted he had blackouts that were fueled by anger, identified by his father as having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from involvement in 9-11 rescue attempts, a sweet and intelligent guy, but very aggressive, identified by a lay person at the Buddist Temple where he worshiped as someone who might kill himself one day. Well Aaron Alexis doesn’t have to kill himself, somebody did it for him. Security did it at The Washington Navy Yard. But, not before he went on a rampage and shot and killed 12 people and injured countless others both physically and emotionally.
They walk amongst us and we don’t even know it. But, we do know it! Take a look at the track record. Not only do we know it we ignore it. Aaron Alexis discharge from the Navy was commuted from a general discharge to an honorable discharge. He had up to ten counts of misconduct while in the Navy. Who makes these systemic changes? He was identified by friends and co-workers as aggressive, had swings in his personality, was potentially bi-polar, carried and used weapons, and had suicide ideation. Yet, it was reported that he was a civilian information technology contractor, he worked on the Navy and Marine Corps intranet and was given a security clearance classified as “secret.” He had a bogus common access card and gained entrance into the yard with a minimum security check. He was deviant and dysfunctional enough to smuggle weapons into the yard probably because his intranet security clearance gave him the full blown view of where to hide himself and his weapons. And, oh yes did I mention that he applied and was granted a license for fire arms like he was applying for a dog license.
I don’t understand it. I do understand it, but I don’t. I can give you the reason, but I can never excuse it. You see reasons have become excuses. We evade the excuse and call it a reason and in doing so we allow those who are dangerously mentally ill to walk amongst us and have their way with us. We remain politically correct at the risk of allowing someone with Aaron Alexis’s profile to walk into a Navy Yard, open fire and kill twelve people; people that he didn’t even know but that represented the dark world that he lived in. Oh, he had anger issues for sure, but no one will know who he was angry at. Political correctness will be the undoing of this country. The truth is something that we all think but rarely say for our own fear of judgment by others. But, if we don’t learn to understand that someone with Alexis’s profile is dangerous we will fear the judgment of others who accuse us of racial, political, psychological profiling. I love this quote by George Orwell; “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that speak it.” The truth is they walk amongst us and the question is who or what do we fear.
by James Burns | Aug 21, 2013 | Bullies, National Public Radio, Parents, Teachers, The Bully Proof Classroom, Victims
Please credit the author of this article and do visit www.npr.org for more great articles on this topic and many others. I merely did the posting.
Victims Of Bullying Are More Likely To Be Arrested As Adults
by Nancy Shute
August 01, 2013 3:40 PM
Children who are bullied over time are more apt to struggle as adults.
You’d expect bullies to grow up to get in trouble with the law.
But children who are consistently bullied also are more likely to run afoul of the law as adults, including being arrested and jailed.
Almost 14 percent of people who said they were bullied repeatedly in childhood and their teens had been in prison, compared to 6 percent of people who weren’t bullied, according to a study.
Women who were repeatedly bullied before age 18 were more likely to use alcohol or drugs than men, and also more likely to be arrested and incarcerated.
“Males and females are different,” says , an associate professor with the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who led the study. “Females tend to be a little more vulnerable.”
Most violence research doesn’t look at whether victims are more likely to become offenders, Turner says. He looked at data from 7,335 people who were between the ages of 12 and 16 in 1996. They were part of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which followed them for 14 years.
Fifteen percent said they had been bullied repeatedly in childhood. Six percent said they were bullied after age 12. And 5 percent said they had been victimized both in childhood and in their teens. These chronic victims were the ones most apt to have substance abuse and criminal justice problems as young adults.
“The walkaway from this is being a victim regardless of the time is pretty strongly associated with subsequent legal problems,” Turner told Shots. “But it was the chronic victims who experienced the highest odds of subsequent involvement in the system.”
The survey didn’t ask the participants if they were bullies themselves or measure the type of bullying they received. It was presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Honolulu.
Other research has found that people who were bullied as children are more likely to have as adults.
Parents and pediatricians should look for signs that a child is bullied, Turner says, and make sure that children get prompt help in managing that adversity, rather than figuring things will get better with time.
“We have to catch them early,” Turner says. “Victimization tends to peak in fifth, sixth, seventh grade. We have to intervene early in the life course and over a sustained period. ”
by James Burns | Jul 30, 2013 | Leadership, Radio Show, Teachers, The Bully Proof Classroom
When I was growing up, there was nothing better than bringing home a report card that had good grades on it. Oh, I wasn’t a straight A student, but I got my share of A’s and B’s. I also got my share of C’s and D’s. I guess I was what you call an average student. My parents always checked my report card and questioned any low grades and encouraged me to do better when they felt that I wasn’t working up to my abilities. Today good grades are still the benchmark we use to determine if a student is going to be promoted or retained. The higher achieving students who are in high school usually strive for good grades in rigorous courses, because they know that their class ranking among other things will determine the type of college that they will be admitted to. Good grades are something that everyone wants, and for some reason, they’re just about what everyone gets. The two questions that I have are these: does everyone who gets a good grade deserve it, and is that grade a good indicator of the person’s ability?
I remember when I was a freshman in high school, and I struggled with Algebra I. I couldn’t catch on no matter what. The teacher was great, she knew her stuff, and she did everything to try and get me through this subject. I ended up failing the class. I told my dad that I would take the class again in my sophomore year, because back then you only needed to take three years of math. He wouldn’t hear of it, and he made me go to summer school. In summer school I really got a grasp of the subject matter. My grade was still only a C, but I really understood the material. I had mastered the content. When I took algebra two during my sophomore year I received a final grade of an A. That was one A that I felt I really earned. I felt good about the A, but I felt even better that I really knew the subject matter.
A student can earn an A in a class for a lot of reasons. He/she may be a very hard worker and really apply himself/herself. The teacher may be benevolent and award A’s to most or all of the students, the student might cheat on tests and quizzes, or the teacher may have cooperative groups set up in his/her classroom, which allows for group work to be turned in with everyone receives the same grade. In the last 20 years, the grading system has become progressively more liberal. Teachers almost never fail students anymore. I think two of the biggest reasons why the grading system in schools has become so liberal is because of parental pressure, and because teachers have been told by administration that they can’t fail kids. Parents who have kids in high school know of the competition that’s out there to get into good colleges. If their son/daughter receives a B in a class, they know it could throw of their child’s class ranking and their child might not be able to get into the college of their choice. Teachers fear giving a low grade because district scrutiny says that if they fail too many students, those failing grades are reflection poor teaching.
Society views good grades as an indicator of student success. The current brain research tell us that in order to determine if a child has mastered school related material they have to show that they retained the information 24-48 hours after they have been given a test.
If a student takes a social studies test on WWII and receives a grade of an A, does that mean that he/she has mastered the content? The only way to be really sure is to test the student again in a day or two. This is very unrealistic and I could never imagine any school doing this.
I have a friend whose son is attending Dartmouth College. I know that he never worried about his grades and neither did his mother. He was more concerned about learning the content of the course. The good grades came as a result of his attitude about learning. I don’t believe that he measured himself based on grades, but rather on how much he learned and remembered. When he took a class he always tried to figure out what he was going to get out of the teacher, or out of a textbook if the teacher wasn’t too good. It didn’t matter to him how the material was taught, and it certainly didn’t matter to him if the teacher was good or if the teacher was bad. He applied himself as a student and he himself worked to master the content. Successful people don’t really worry about a grade; they are more concerned about what they are going to learn. Knowledge to them is sacred, and they work to get as much of it as they can. Grades create competition and that’s a good thing. Good colleges are filled with good students who have worked hard to get where they are and who want to stay where they are. Excellent students like receiving A’s, but they know that that the grades they have received are only an indication that they have truly mastered the material that was taught.
by James Burns | Jun 14, 2013 | Anti Bullying Tips, Bully Proof Classroom, Radio Show, School Administrators, Teachers
If you are not listening to The Bully Proof Classrooms radio shows on blogtalkradio you should be. Every Monday at 6:30 am est. a 15 minute show is done that provides you with The Anti Bullying Tip of the Week. This show provides a short anti bullying tip and a life lesson that you can communicate to your students or your children.
On Tuesday evening at 7:30 pm est. you can hear a great interview with an author or a noted professional who is involved in the anti bullying movement. On nights when we are not interviewing someone you will hear a great show on anti bullying, relationships, dating, the family and a variety of related topics that will give you unique insights into some of life’s very basic but at times more complicated inter-personal issues.
All shows are archived, so if you miss a show just go the the site and listen at your convenience. The Bully Proof Classroom is now on iTunes as well. So if you have an iphone, ipad, smart phone, or android device just go to iTunes and search The Bully Proof Classroom. You can subscribe to the entire show or just listen to selected podcasts.
So please go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bullyproofclassroom
AND LISTEN NOW!
by James Burns | May 20, 2013 | Anti Bullying Tips, School Administrators, Teachers, The Bully Proof Classroom
Jonathan Niese pitcher for The New York Mets just pitched a gem of a baseball game against The St. Louis Cardinals. He pitched 7.1 innings, struck out three, walked two, and allowed six hits and two runs. The Mets snapped a six game losing streak and won the game 5-2. The last 2 games that Niese pitched before this one weren’t too good. As a matter of fact he was god-awful, and he just plain stunk. They asked Niese what was different today in a post game interview and he said “I started throwing the ball over the top again, and not off to the side.” Niese’s hand position when delivering a baseball to home plate is undetectable to the naked eye, but his pitching coach Dan Warthen noticed the difference and corrected it. Hold your left hand out in front of you with your palm facing toward someone or something. Now turn your hand at the wrist one inch to the left. Once Niese brought his hand back to the right his delivery to home plate improved. That little one inch move to the left made the difference in Niese being a winner today and a loser the last two games.
Sometimes it takes a coach to help us make changes, but in reality we don’t have a coach. A life coach that is. We go through life doing things, and saying things until we find out that we are making small mistakes in our life, in our marriage or relationships, with our children, and on our jobs. The late Steven Covey put it best when he said; “Often we climb the ladder of success only to discover at the end of our life that the ladder was leaning on the wrong wall.”
We are only a compilation of what people have said to us and what people have done to us throughout our lives, and the decisions that we make or have made are based upon the imprint that we have received as a child. The way we think, the things we say, the way we act, our attitudes, and our motives are almost set in stone by the time we are just five years old. Like a computer if our brain is not programmed correctly we will believe that what we say and do is true and accurate, and our decisions in life may be based on some false conclusions that we have drawn about the world and the people in it. Jon Niese didn’t even notice the very small repositioning of his hand on the ball; he thought that his mechanics were fine and couldn’t understand why he was pitching so poorly. As adults we don’t notice the small things that we do or say that could be rude, discourteous, or just plain inconsiderate, and believe that we are doing just fine. We have a hard time trying to understand why we keep losing at the game of life. The coach told Niese about his mechanical error, other people tell us about our shortcomings and the things we don’t see or even realize. These are our blind spots. Niese adjusted, can we? Truly, the big stuff is the small stuff.
