For Phyllis Young: Intervening With Peer Violence

Bullying: What Every Adult Needs to Know

produced by Paraclete Press (Millis, MA: Aquarius Health Care Media, 2003, originally published 2003),

27 mins

PARACLETE VIDEO PRODUCTIONS

Stew Herrera: Seven out of 10 kids have been bullied. Over 150,000 students stay home from school each day to avoid being bullied. Bullying has serious consequences for both the victims and the bullies, ranging from low self esteem to violence and even to suicide. Young people need guidance from the adults in their lives to deal with bullying in a healthy way. This video contains information that every adult needs to know about bullying and about how they can help young people who experience bullying.

Lynne Reeves Griffin: Bullying is really a, a subjective experience. It's what the children feel. It's what the child says to you is bothering them.

01:10 Stew Herrera: Lynne Reeves Griffin, of Proactive Parenting in Scituate, Massachusetts is a lecturer, writer, and consultant to parents, teachers, and healthcare professionals regarding child development and behavior management issues.

01:20 Lynne Reeves Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. Director of Proactive Parenting

Lynne Reeves Griffin: It's any situation in, in which children feel intimidated, they feel threatened, they feel unsafe, and so even if a very sensitive child is telling you they feel that and to your eyes that looks rather, you know, kids will be kids kind of a thing, you still have to hear that because that child is telling you that's their perception, that's their feeling, that's their experience.

01:45 Stew Herrera: Throughout this video, kids will share their experiences with bullying.

01:50 UNKNOWN: You're supposed to be what everybody else wants you to be. When you're not, that's when you start getting bullied.

01:55 UNKNOWN: I think that there are a lot of aspects of bullying. Um, there's the physical aspect of getting pushed around in the hallway or intimidation. But I think that bullying also includes psychological aspects. Um, teasing, name calling, um, getting inside of people's heads so it starts eating away at them.

02:15 Mark Brown Youth Motivational Specialist QSP, Inc., A Subsidiary of Reader's Digest

UNKNOWN: When I talk to kids, what I hear from them most is that bullying is any behavior that makes them feel unsafe. It hurts their feelings, makes them scared and they're afraid to go to school and they can't have fun anymore.

02:30 Stew Herrera: Mark Brown remembers being bullied as a child. Born in Jamaica, he moved to the United States when he was 19. Today, he is a Youth Motivational Specialist who is dedicated his career to helping young people understand the harmful effects of bullying. Through a national outreach program sponsored by QSP, Inc, a subsidiary of Reader's Digest, Mark uses his own personal experience and expertise to teach kids about the importance of tolerance and respect.

03:00 Mark Brown: I can relate to the kid who's bullied. I can recall being 10 years old in elementary school in Kingston, Jamaica and there were three girls in my class who just made me feel miserable and the thing is, after 32 years, I can still remember their names. I can still see their faces and I can still recall how afraid I was, how ashamed I was 'cuz how they made me feel. And some people think that bullying and peer pressure are the same thing. Not really. Peer pressure is when a group of kids will cause someone else to want to do something. For example, I gotta get Nike sneakers or I gotta get Adidas footwear because everybody else wears it. When somebody's bullied, they don't feel safe. They feel hurt, they feel wounded, and they feel ashamed.

03:40 UNKNOWN: I think people are bullies because they're insecure about themselves and that sometimes by, by teasing on someone else or bullying someone else, they get also almost a natural high that makes them feel better about themselves

04:00 Stew Herrera: Ann Phelan is a sixth grade guidance counselor at Nauset Regional Middle School in Massachusetts.

04:05 Ann Phelan Sixth Grade Guidance Counselor Nauset Regional Middle School

Ann Phelan: Sometimes it's about power and affiliation and if a child perceives that they will have peer recognition by being in charge, by being the tough guy, they'll assume that role and usually it's reinforced by their peers because they don't wanna get in the way of that person. So they actually empower them when they take on that role.

04:25 Lynne Reeves Griffin: What I find in my practice is that the children that are labeled as bullies are often children who have parents who potentially have issues socially as well so that the role modeling and the coaching that the child receives or doesn't receive puts them in a place where this is more likely to happen. Typically those children who have issues with boundaries socially and then are labeled as a bully are in fact children that have trouble with boundaries in a, in a number of different places.

04:55 Mark Brown: I'm no counselor or psychotherapist but in my experience with kids, I realize that bullies often act the way they do to gain some kind of superiority. They want to be noticed. They want to be in charge and they don't know how to behave or how to build good relationships and my wish is that these people think about how they behave and learn from those around them to develop some good, strong social skills.

05:15 UNKNOWN: I think that usually when somebody bullies someone else, it's a cry for help. That they're so insecure about themselves, something's going on inside their head that they feel the need to have to personally attack somebody else.

05:30 Ann Phelan: There's different kinds of bullies in this school. Um, there's the ones that are really quiet and subtle about it and do it when no one can see it. There's sometimes a group and there's usually a ringleader and then a group that kind of encourages it or, um, supports it. There's the outward aggressive bully that's physical and just continues to have one incident after another with lots of behavioral consequences within school and, um, you know, there's the occasional bully that most of us have been. You know, sometimes we just pick on someone.

06:05 UNKNOWN: When a boy bullies someone, I think that they use their hormones and physically try to bully that person or the victim. I think that they hit people more than girls would.

06:20 UNKNOWN: You always find girls that will physically fight but I think it's more of like the name calling or, um, attacking how the girl looks, what the girls wearing, what the girl did the weekend before.

06:30 Ann Phelan: Girl bullies are vicious in that they pick on things like promiscuity issues and sexuality issues. They usually work together as a group and it's always, um, an inconsistent theme. For instance, they may bully one girl for a while and then become friends with her. Ostracism is really huge with girls in that I'm not talking to her, so you can't either. And that is really devastating for girls. Boys are just really blatant about it.

07:05 Mark Brown Youth Motivational Specialist QSP, Inc., A Subsidiary of Reader's Digest

Mark Brown: In my work as spokesman for QSP's national outreach program on bullying, I talk to hundreds of kids every single week and I found, in some cases, the verbal bullying is even more dangerous than the physical bullying. Kids are intimidated and they carry the names people use against them for life. I've met kids who have been called a fat kid and they're now in school teaching and a tear rolls down their eye when they remember what it was like to be called a fat kid in school. In some ways, physical bullying is harsh. Kids are pushed, shoved into lockers and hurt that way but sometimes the word can remain in your mind and your heart and your psyche for a long, long time.

07:40 UNKNOWN: Well, last year, um, I was in a tough situation and I had to wear this, uh, this kind of a brace kind of thing where, uh, it kinda was pretty, pretty ugly. Um, it was basically like waist up. Uh, I had a collar around my head and I couldn't, couldn't really move. One time I was in math class and I was trying to sit down and I fell over and this girl that was sitting a row over from me started hysterically laughing and pointing at me in front of the class. This happened a couple, couple times and, you know, maybe not, I didn't fall over in my chair a couple times but, you know, she would find a way to make fun of my situation.

08:25 UNKNOWN: One of my friends was interested in this senior boy and he had a girlfriend who was a senior and the boy started calling my friend and his girlfriend found out. And so she decided to get her group of friends kind of against my group of friends, to make sure that the girl knew that he was taken and to stop talking to him and to kind of back off, even though he was the one calling her and trying to hang out with her. And it got to the point where my whole group of friends was being physically, not physically bullied but they would like hiss at us and call us, you know, names and it got to the point where I didn't feel safe walking down the hallway that they were walking down because I was afraid that I was gonna be, like, attacked and I was taking alternative routes in the school to avoid seeing them in the hallways and it just got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore, my friends couldn't take it anymore.

09:25 UNKNOWN: There was, um, a kid in our middle school that was just different than everybody else. He was unathletic, not coordinated, talks differently. He just didn't seem to hang around in the same, around the same kids and I think just different but I think different is huge in middle school because you're supposed to be what everybody else wants you to be but when you're not is when you start getting bullied.

10:00 Mark Brown: Bullies often try to pick on those kids who they believe are not gonna fight back. That was my situation. When I was 8, 9 10 years old, I was never very assertive. If my teacher said something to me, I would kind of cower and hide and not say anything and there are those in my school who knew that about me and they would use that as a reason and a means to make me feel miserable and very often it is the child who is more compliant, who is less assertive, who is more quiet, who carries themself almost like a target. Here I am, I'm prime for bullying. I encourage kids very often to walk with their shoulders up, head high, let the bullies know they aren't afraid of them. Sometimes I can tell that a child is being bullied. Maybe they'll come from school and they're very uncommunicative. They don't say much. They go to their room and they're quiet. They don't want to play their favorite games. They don't want to go out and have fun with their friends anymore. Their homework isn't as good. Their work quality isn't as good. They don't wanna go to school in the morning and they don't lose, they don't wanna eat as much anymore. These are all little signs that maybe a child is being bullied and if you see those signs, it's time to open up, talk to them, and find out what's going on in their lives.

11:10 UNKNOWN: Usually, like, they'll turn like red. Like right on the spot they'll start blushing or, you know, even just kind of walk away or maybe start crying. Those are like the immediate signs. I think over time, they can become really withdrawn from people, kind of just like I get picked on. I wanna totally just avoid people all together and then I think, like, the extreme case would be depression. Girls will actually, you know, develop eating disorders, um, anorexia, bulimia. Um, I, I have friends that that's happened to before and it's changed their lives, you know. They have to battle this horrible illness now.

11:50 Lynne Reeves Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. Director of Proactive Parenting

Lynne Reeves Griffin: Now one of the tricks that we as parents and teachers need to know is that asking questions isn't always the best way to get your answer. If you were to say to a child, for example, what's going on? Is there anything going on at school? Are you having trouble with your friends? Sometimes that puts kids on the spot and they're reluctant to answer those questions or they may not know how to answer those questions. So another, more valuable, way of going after that information is to state things as a fact. You're sad. Something's up. I'd love you to tell me what that is. It's a different way to go after it but it makes the child feel more relaxed, more comfortable and you validated that those feelings are real.

12:35 [music]

UNKNOWN: Our self-esteem was so low so all this anger was just stressed and, like, pulling you and, like, keep on poking you like a thousand times.

12:45 Lynne Reeves Griffin: The short term effects for a child being bullied, uh, include being concerned about your daily life, not wanting to go to school, not wanting to go to the places where you're going to have to experience this. The long term effects really have a lot to do with the evolving self-image of, of a young child, of a pre-adolescent or an adolescent. In these years, we're developing our sense of who we are, what we like, what we don't like, how we're seen by others and so if you're being bullied and others are giving you language about yourself that forms that identity, that's problematic.

13:20 Mark Brown: In the short term, victims are often afraid to tell anybody what's happening to them. They get afraid, they get scared and they're concerned if they tell somebody, they'll get more bullying or worse, if they tell and somebody finds out, they'll be called a tattle tale and then it's, they'll feel there's even more ridicule coming their way. The effects of bullying can last a long time. I read, I read one study where a gentlemen was checking on kids who were bullied and he found out the impact remained over 60 years later. Now in my travels, I met principals, teachers, and counselors. I met one particular assistant principal, a lovely lady in the midwest, who recalled when she was going to college 30 years ago, she was afraid to walk in the main college campus because she remembered what it was like being bullied in elementary, middle, and high school and to this day, she still remembers that experience. So the impact of being bullied can remain with you for a long time.

14:20 UNKNOWN: Gashes on your face from being punched or bruises from being pushed into lockers can heal but it's a lot harder for mental scars inside. To be laughed at during your school year, to be made fun of, to be pointed out in front of everybody. Those scars are harder to fix.

14:45 Lynne Reeves Griffin: The short term effect for, uh, the bully himself in terms of, uh, you know, how it affects him or her is that it reinforces ways of behaving. So, for example, if I intimidate someone to get what I need and that works for me, I get what I need because that person is afraid of me, then we learn that intimidation works. The long term effect of course is that you don't form good friendships, you have trouble with relationships, people are, are, find, find it difficult to spend time with you.

15:15 Mark Brown Youth Motivational Specialist QSP, Inc. A subsidiary of Reader's Digest

Mark Brown: Studies have shown that bullies, in the long run, very often are more likely to be involved in crime and doing drugs and other antisocial behaviors in the long run. In the short run, they may think they're getting ahead and they may think they're getting popular but in effect, they really are turning other people against them by anti-social behavior. It's important for bullies to get help and to learn about the impact of their behavior on those around them.

15:45 [music]

Ann Phelan Sixth Grade Guidance Counselor Nauset Regional Middle School

Ann Phelan: Helping the kid who's bullied is really, really important because if they don't feel safe here and they don't feel good about themselves, they're not gonna learn and their academic performance is gonna go down and they're gonna hold those memories with them for a long time. So the most important thing I do is to establish a good relationship and to validate their feelings and really just listen and sometimes it takes a lot of time just sitting and listening and talking about how they feel but then once they have your trust and once they know that someone is gonna really take charge and listen and help them, you come up with a plan that really involves the child becoming empowered.

16:30 UNKNOWN: I love the feeling that I had my parents behind me, my friends behind me, the school behind me. I thought that was a plus because, at the beginning, I was all alone and I felt that I was personally being threatened by these girls and that there was nobody that I could talk to. I mean, I kind of kept it all inside but then once I told the guidance counselor what was going on, then, um, I think it actually started because a teacher overheard me saying that I didn't want to go to school anymore and she went and told, um, the principal that they had to do something about it. But in the end, it was the best feeling knowing that all of these people were behind me to help me get through this and to help these girls realize that what they were doing wasn't okay.

17:10 UNKNOWN: They used to, like, draw on us.

17:15 UNKNOWN: They used to throw us down on the floor, beat us up, spit on our face, draw on our face. Just anything that you think is horrible, you, you, that's what happened to us.

17:20 UNKNOWN: You couldn't really tell your parents 'cuz if you did, you'd probably get your butt kicked more 'cuz they'd be like oh, where's your mom now?

17:30 Lynne Reeves Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. Director of Proactive Parenting

Lynne Reeves Griffin: We have to be very proactive in our communication with children. We need to be talking to our children all the time. As parents and as teachers, we need to have an open line of communications with our students. You can let them know that you're, you will communicate with them about anything, no matter how difficult. If that message is truly sent to children, then they will get that message in reverse, that if my parent will talk to me about anything then I think I can talk to my parent about anything too. And you'll have that back and forth, uh, experience.

18:00 Mark Brown: Victims of bullies want to know people care. They want to know that people are involved in their lives. I got a phone call from Dallas, Texas from a parent who called me to let me know that her daughter who was bullied for two and a half years was so overjoyed that one person, me, came to her school, talked about bullying and seemed to understand and care about them. She went home crying tears of joy. That kind of behavior tells me that young people need badly and want the support of their family, their friends, their loved ones, and people in authority at the schools.

18:40 UNKNOWN: I was afraid that the girls were gonna find out that I was, you know, being a tattle tale on them and that it was gonna lead to more bullying. The school really did a good job in making sure that I felt comfortable enough that the girls weren't gonna find out.

19:00 Ann Phelan: Kids have a really hard time coming forward and talking about bullying because there's a strong code of silence within the school and with kids and in the peer, um, hierarchy, you don't go get help in that case because sometimes it can make it worse and so what we try to do is I work with the children on creating ways where we can get help for them so that they're not perceived as a tattler. Um, we encourage them and validate their feelings, let them know that if we don't stop it now, it can happen to other people. Um, kids perhaps have been bullied for a long time and someone didn't listen or someone didn't take attention. Lots of times parents will say oh, just ignore them, that, you know, you can just go to school and deal with it and after a while, kids just kind of accept it as part of their role. So that's the unfortunate thing.

19:45 Mark Brown: In my experience traveling across the country, I've met thousands of kids and very often what they're most afraid of is repercussions. Is the bully getting back at them because they have told someone about it. For them to get rid of that fear, they must approach their parents and those in authority and their role, the parents and principals and teachers, first of all, is to take all the bullying seriously and to let that child know, we are here to help you. We will help you to take care of this problem.

19:45 Mark Brown: In my experience traveling across the country, I've met thousands of kids and very often what they're most afraid of is repercussions. Is the bully getting back at them because they have told someone about it. For them to get rid of that fear, they must approach their parents and those in authority and their role, the parents and principals and teachers, first of all, is to take all the bullying seriously and to let that child know, we are here to help you. We will help you to take care of this problem.

20:20 Ann Phelan Sixth Grade Guidance Counselor Nauset Regional Middle School

Ann Phelan: I help the bully in different ways. Basically, I think the most important thing is to talk to them about rules and expectations, to talk to them about what's acceptable behavior and to explore with them what their own personal experiences are. Have they been bullied? What's happening for them at home? How did they feel about it? And what we do is just work through it in that respect.

20:50 Stew Herrera: Greg Baecker is the principal at Nauset Regional Middle School in Massachusetts.

Greg Baecker, Principal Nauset Regional Middle School

UNKNOWN: The disciplinary consequences we want to be the last step because, you see, the key for us is we wanna be able to help the child change their behavior. You can give a child all the disciplinary consequences you want but if the kid still comes back displaying the same kinds of behaviors, you haven't changed anything. So the, the bottom line here is to find ways to get both the bullier and the person who's receiving those types of comments, to give them both strategies to be successful so you can change those behaviors.

21:25 Mark Brown: We can help bullies to understand that their behavior really is destructive. See, bullies often say hey, what's the big deal. I don't mean to hurt nobody. I'm having fun. It's not a big deal. I don't mean to hurt them. But they need to understand that their words are weapons, their words can hurt others and they need to be taught the importance of building good social skills and the value of building and keeping great relationships. One of the first things I would do is let the bully try to understand exactly how somebody else feels. The old Golden Rule says do unto others as you would have do unto you. Have the bully put themselves in the shoes of the child who was their victim. Many schools are using programs now where they have playacting and role playing and they play out situations for the bully to see and understand what their victims are going through. That's one important way we can teach bullies how to change their behaviors.

22:20 Lynne Reeves Griffin: I think we can prevent bullying by recognizing that everything we do in advance of the incidents themselves or the incident itself is important.

22:35 Ann Phelan: We have a guidance curriculum we've entitled Positive School Climate and it incorporates a lot of different things. We use some curriculums from some other places, such as the Teaching Tolerance Foundation. We did Mix It Up Day, which was a lunch day program where we asked kids to sit with other children to look at social boundaries.

22:55 Greg Baecker: We had an assembly program after Mix It Up Day to get the kids to respond to us as to what they thought about the day. Was it beneficial? What was good about it? What was bad about it? And we did this in, in whole grade assemblies. A young man came up to the microphone and he said to the group of 240 sixth graders that Mix It Up Day was no different for him and he was asked well, why was that. He said because kids treated me the same today that they treat me every other day. They didn't sit with me and I don't have a lot of friends. Now when he made that statement in a room with 240 sixth graders and adults, you could hear a pin drop. I am pleased to say that as a result, someone heard what he said and now he actually has kids sitting with him at the table and having lunch with him.

23:55 Ann Phelan: Schools and teachers really have a huge responsibility because if it's not allowed and if it's, if it's, it's stopped, children have a good model of what's acceptable in social behaviors. So schools have a lot of different roles. We need to have programming so that children have an understanding of boundaries and rules and perspectives. They also need to be aware that those rules are not just within a school but they're involved in state and federal situations, out in public. Um, we need to be clear and consistent about what expectations are. So for instance, if they hear something in the classroom, a comment such as you're a fag, they need to stop the lesson and they need to address it. That's not acceptable behavior and we're not gonna accept that word in this classroom. So that way the kids say phew, she's not gonna let this happen or he's not gonna put up with that here in our class. It's safe. If it happens again, the teacher needs to reinforce the same kind of comment but then say you and I need to talk after class about it so that the kids see that there's follow through, that I can trust this teacher. They're not gonna let my class be like this. In the hallways, teachers really need to be visible because that's where it happens a lot and our administrator and in most schools ask the teachers, be outside the classroom. Be where the kids are mixing and mingling because you need to see the subtle stuff.

25:15 Lynne Reeves Griffin: I think the most important thing in general is communication and we hear that a lot but we don't know what that really means and what that really means is that you talk to your kids every day about important subjects. One very simple strategy is to find a time at the end of the day to say tell me the best thing about your day and tell me the worst thing about your day.

25:35 Mark Brown: In order for us to prevent bullying, it has to be a concerted effort at school, at home, in our churches, in our communities, in our social clubs. If everyone decides I will teach my children how to build good relationships, if every child says I'm gonna be a good citizen, learn to be a good friend and be respectful to each other, we'll be on the way to ridding ourselves completely of bullying.

26:05 Producer Charity Spatzeck-Olsen

Director Hans Spatzeck-Olsen

Executive Producers Dr. Lillian Miao Robert Edmonson

Narrator Stew Herrera

Special thanks QSP, Inc., A subsidiary of Reader's Digest Mark Brown Marblehead High School and its Staff and Students Laurie Meagher Danielle Bushnell Mathew Witter Rule Broadcast Systems Joe Laraja Nauset Regional Middle School and its Staff and Students Ann Phelan Gregory Baecker Tony Cedeno Susan Williams Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System of the London Family Court Clinic, Inc. Music by FirstCom Music, Inc.

PARACLETE VIDEO PRODUCTIONS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT C2003.

26:10 [music]