Types of Bullying

Drawing of a group of men bullying another

This entry is part 4 of 35 in the series Bullying

In the past, people considered physical aggressiveness as bullying. Being a form of violence, it was easy to distinguish. Every physical act that was meant to hurt someone else physically was violence and therefore an act of bullying. However, the modern definition of bullying is much broader, so that made many people think there is a lot more bullying today, when in fact, it was here all along, but it was much more acceptable.

For example, name calling and exclusion of people based on their gender, race or disability were very common parts of daily life 40 years ago. I remember myself being intimidated by name calling as a kid. I was bullied and a bully myself. I was made fun of constantly for my skin color or ethnic affiliation and I joined others in making fun of others for other reasons.

I do not think we have more bullying nowadays. I think the level of bullying is similar to what it was in the past, we just pay attention to it more now and are more willing to address it and create an accepting, tolerant and happy society.

People use different forms of bullying to threaten, intimidate and create emotional pain. Here is a list of behaviors that are considered bullying. As I read each one of them, I saw only one form that was new and was not there 40 years ago. Other than that, we had them all and in some respects even worse.

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STOP! For Your Kids’ Sake

As parents, we often claim that whatever we do, we do for our kids and, as far as our awareness goes, that is true. But parents are human, which means our decision-making involves mostly emotional reasoning and subconscious values, beliefs and needs, which our mind cleverly re-dresses as calculated choices.

Sometimes, life hands us a rare opportunity to become aware of our choices of lifestyle. These are typically unpleasant, but they still get the job done. Ronit and I have written before about our own baby losses and about our friend’s near-death experience.

I want to share with you a talk given by Scott Stratten at TEDx.

In his post 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me, one of the most important things on the list is “My girlfriend and son were in a car accident December ’07 while I was at my Nanny’s (aka Grandmother) funeral. He walked away unscathed, she lives in constant pain and has partial brain damage and it kills me every day that I can’t fix it or I can’t go punch the woman in the mouth who ran the red light”.

I have been following him for a while and find him inspiring in many respects, but this video really hit a spot for me and I hope it will for you too. My son and I watched the video together and it made us choke.

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What is NOT Bullying?

This entry is part 3 of 35 in the series Bullying

When talking about bullying, it is very important for parents (and teachers and kids) to understand what bullying is not. Many times, a single act or behavior is out of proportion, but it is not considered bullying.

Some people think that bullying is any aggressive behavior and although such behaviors are a source of concern and need attention, it is important to separate them from bullying. As I said in the first chapter of the bullying series, bullying is recurring and deliberate abuse of power.

It is not easy for kids to understand the difference between a deliberate act and an accidental one, but it surprises me that many grownups also talk about things people do to them as if they were done intentionally to hurt them. Such perception is very dangerous, because every minor act of conflict, done without any intention to harm, can escalate and become a big conflict.

Much like in any communication, whether it is verbal or not, there are two sides involved. Bullying is a form of communication and depends not only on the giver but also on the receiver. For an incident to be considered bullying, the aggressor must want to hurt someone and the victim must perceive the incident as a deliberate act of abuse.

It is very important for the victim to know what bullying is not to make sure that when things seem hurtful, they will not fall immediately into the category of bullying, because the way to overcome bullying is different from the way to overcome other hurtful acts.

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Bullying Statistics are Scary

This entry is part 2 of 35 in the series Bullying

Bullying has become a problem in our society. As I promised in the first chapter of the bullying series, I will share with you today the facts and figures about bullying and they are very scary. But I am not writing this to scare you, just to create awareness to this epidemic of violence in our society. I also believe that parents and educators, who are the majority of the readers of this site, have the power to change it.

Bullying statistics from research

I have spent a long time reviewing information about bullying. Much of it appeared on various government sites, so where the source is missing below, some government agency has publicly confirmed it.

* A study done in 2007 on a group of 6th Graders found that 89% of kids had experienced some form of bullying and 59% of the students had participated in some form of bullying

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Stubborn Kids

I know a lot about stubborn kids, because I was famous for being stubborn as a child myself. Only later in life, when I studied education, I realized that people call their kids “stubborn” when they themselves do not give up and follow their kids’ instructions or rules. That made me think that in order for a child to be stubborn and insist on doing something, you need to have an adult that insist on doing something else.

I learned this amazing thing from a young kid who was about 2 years old at the time (he is 22 years old now). Let me tell you, learning it from a kid is much more humiliating than learning it from other adults, so I hope you will be able to learn it from reading this if you do not want to have to suffer the humiliation of “losing to a rug”.

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Anybody Can Do It

If you have ever been to a seminar about personal development, wealth creation, investment, Internet marketing or business (and I stopped counting them some time ago), you have heard the following resounding statement:

“If I can do it, anybody can”

This is typically said at the end of a story of how the presenter has clawed his or her way from extreme poverty, shame and rejection to the stellar success that forms the basis of the whole seminar. Some of these presenters look like pretty normal people, even if they dress up a bit more than their audience, so why not believe them?

Because everybody can IN THEORY. Sure, everybody can retrace the presenter’s steps and, if everything also happens the same way, make lots of money and become really successful and happy.

Oh, wait. What if it does not happen to me the same way?

Exactly! This question appears in most people’s minds as soon as they start thinking about applying all those wonderful tips and methods to themselves and their own life.

You see, when a person stands on stage, having made lots of money, it is easy to imagine them having the same confidence when they first started out. But they did not have it, and it dawns on us as soon as we shift our focus to us.

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Guardians of Beliefs

Beliefs can cause all our problems in life. Luckily for us, beliefs are also the most powerful weapon we have against them. It just depends what kind of beliefs we have.

For the most part, beliefs are created in our minds without our consent. Most of the beliefs you have today were not formed through a process of conscious choice. Things that have happened to you in the past, things you have heard from people who are close to you or who you trust, things you have observed in the world around you, things you have been taught and even imagined create your belief system. Most of them have occurred during childhood, when you did not have enough life experience to doubt them.

Doubt is a defense mechanism in our mind that functions as a bodyguard and prevents beliefs from entering our system. This bodyguard evolves over the years. When kids are young, this bodyguard is not very developed and it has very simple ways to filter beliefs.

– If it is from someone close to me who cares for/about me, it must be true
– If I have heard it 3 or more times, it must be true
– If something has happened to me once, it will happen again
– Every painful experience must be recoded to so I do not get hurt again
– Every success experience must be recorded so I can make it happen again

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Raising Grownups

Parents often see themselves as “raising children”.

Not true.

Parents are actually raising future grownups and this is an important distinction, because grownups are independent, hopefully self-sufficient humans, whereas children are rather dependent and undeveloped beings who need continuous care and attention.

So in essence, no matter what we do today, we should do it with the final creation in mind – our future son or daughter when they are ready to say goodbye and beyond.

Will they be healthy and able to care for themselves so they can stay healthy?

Will they have the knowledge they need to not only survive in the world but also succeed?

Will they have the strength of character to do well and be happy?

But daily life is quite different for most parents. In most homes, parents are busy people and when they interact with their kids, it is often to do with housekeeping, cleaning up their messy rooms, getting off the computer or getting ready to go somewhere in a hurry. Most of the communication between parents and their children is aimed at right now (“Come here”, “Stop making noise”, “Clean your room” or “Let’s go”) and sometimes at the recent past (“Why did you…”, “If only you had…” or “You should have…”).

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Kids in Power Prison (2): The great debate

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Kids in Power Prison

This is part 2, where you will find out what happened at the camp when I gave the group of student leaders power over their friends.

Boys vs. girls, late group vs. those who came on time, punishment vs. forgiveness. The hot debate lasted for a whole hour, but in the end, did the children pass the power test?

It was scary for me to see how easy it was to fire them up, divide them and move them towards forgetting where they were, who they were and what was important for them. Many of them just surrendered to the feeling of power and control, but not all.

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Kids in Power Prison (1): The prison experiment

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Kids in Power Prison

Two months ago, I took a group of kids to a leadership camp for two days. During these two days, we wanted to teach kids to recognize their abilities and take the role of leadership with responsibility.

The kids were awesome, chosen student leaders in Grade 7, which is the last year of primary school here in Queensland, Australia. They came from 5 schools and had been school captains for more than 7 months. As part of their role, they needed to set an example to other kids and help solve relationship problems among the students at their school. They were chosen because they were smart kids, sensitive and with a high sense of justice. According to their principal and teachers, most of them had passed many tests to become leaders, but they were not ready for the test I had for them – The Power Test.

Before I tell you what happened at the camp, I want to tell you about a famous experiment in psychology, the Prison Experiment, which was the inspiration for my character test. I learned a lot from this experiment and even more from running it myself with a group of young kids. I hope you will feel the same.

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