What Should We Do About Bullying?

Bullies are in the news. Young people with whole lives ahead of them are committing suicide under the relentless pressure and cruelty of their peers. What do we do?

There is no question that bullying behavior is reprehensible, but the interesting thing is that bullying is not new. Ask people of any age, and they will recount the bullies that terrorized their playgrounds. What has changed is the advice we are giving children for coping with bullies, and the victims’ self-destructive responses.

When I was a child, parents and teachers told us “sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” Of course, psychologists know today that words can and do hurt. Our parents knew that, too. Their goal was not to discredit, minimize, or dismiss our hurt, but rather to provide us with some skills for dealing with it. Giving us the message that we should curl up and die if somebody said something mean to us is not in anybody’s best interests.

The message to “tough it out” might seem cruel to some, but I’m not sure today’s “victim culture” solution of emphasizing and lamenting over how hurt a victim must feel is superior. Perhaps there’s some middle ground–yes, you’re hurt, but no, you’re not dying so move on and we’re here to help you do that. I find it interesting that discussions of recent suicides related to bullying seem to overlook the fact that the victim had some choices about how to deal with the situation. Suicide is one choice of many. This is not to minimize or excuse the cruelty of the bully or blame the victims, but rather a suggestion that we empower victims instead of viewing their destruction as inevitable and the only reasonable response available to them.

Most importantly, kids need to be taught what to do with bullies on their own. In today’s Dear Abby column, a young girl wanted to know what to do about “looks” from the boys in her class. Good grief–these are middle schoolers. Dear Abby suggested she “tell a teacher.” And the teacher is supposed to do what? Tell boys to stop looking at girls?

As a society, we have moved from telling children “use your words, not your fists” to “don’t even use your words, but go tell an adult.”  Teachers are quite limited in what they can do, and talking to the parents of bullies is usually a waste of time–as one of my favorite bumper stickers says, “Mean people make little mean people.” So what to do?

Children can be taught that basic operant conditioning principles deal effectively with annoying behavior–ignore it when you can, reward any glimmer of positive behavior, and when all else fails, punish. When one of our daughters was on the receiving end of some mean girl action early in elementary school, my husband delighted in making up some new taunts she could return to them–whale weenie, brontosaurus butt, etc.–nothing profane, but shocking enough that the kids backed off out of sheer confusion. Our daughter was thrilled to be sent to the principal’s office for “hurting” the mean girls’ feelings (as if they have any to start with). They didn’t bother her after that. We don’t want kids starting fights, but we can’t be restraining them from acting in self defense.

One of our other daughters experienced a huge amount of cyberbullying as a result of her participation as an elite track and field athlete starting in middle school and extending through college to the Olympic trials. Anonymous posters, both student and adult, savaged her on the message boards just because they could. Some were just jealous, others were people we knew who lost to her dad when he was a track athlete in the 70s, and took it out on her. It was a tough way to grow up, but here’s another outcome–if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. She responded firmly and professionally, and used the potential trauma to build her strengths. She now lectures on maintaining your reputation online.

Even better, victims of bullying should be encouraged to affiliate with others. Bullies are especially astute at picking on loners–people who do not have social support of their own. It’s much less likely that a child will be picked on when he or she has back-up that can retaliate in kind. It’s unlikely that the group will actually have to do anything, but the threat of retaliation is usually sufficient to back off bullies–who are cowards to start with.

So of course parents and schools should do what they can to educate and minimize bullying, but this current business that says you should passively absorb bullying without dishing anything back needs to go. If you are “offended” by somebody’s free speech, use your own. Fight fire with fire. Tit-for-tat works not just in computer simulations, but is a constant of social interaction. You won’t stop a bully, but you can stop them from bothering you. With any luck, having one victim stand up to a bully might make him or her think twice before picking on somebody else.