Categories: Bullying
This is Anti-Bullying Awareness week in Canada. Yes, I wouldn’t have known either. It seems we are failing ourselves and our children by not providing more awareness on this very serious issue facing every 3 out of 4 students in Canada.
I have been conducting my own research on this social issue and at my work, every single person had at least one bullying story to share. In honor of the Sea of Pink campaign, we wore pink shirts to demonstrate more awareness. It was a small gesture but it started conversations because the truth is bullying affects everyone. It weakens our community, stresses our families and destroys our children’s self-esteem with the potential of putting them into high risk situations.
I have the deep privilege of knowing a brave young man who has been victimized by bullying since he was 5 years old and he is now 14. He has been bullied everyday at school, of every year. Sometimes the bullying would be so severe he had to stay home from school and missed approximately 30 days of his education because of this problem facing the school.
He is a hero because he is speaking out about his experiences with bullying and is sharing his story. Tomorrow he is speaking at a public school to students from Kindergarten to Grade 8 and this is his story.
Hi my name is James* and I am 14 years old. Today, I’m going to tell you how it felt for me to be bullied and how it began. But first, show of hands, how many of you have been bullied before? How many of you have bullied someone before?
When it started:
My bullying problem started when I was about 5 years old. The bullying continued from then to the end of grade 8. In kindergarten, people made fun of me, probably because of my size or how I looked. The same people followed me into grade 1 and continued to bully me. As I moved grade through grade, the bullying got worse. I got hurt in some situations, and got caught up in a lot of name calling in other situations. Altogether I have been bullied for a total of 8 whole years. Grade 8 was a hard year for me, but it was worth it. I sat through all the bullying that year and it stopped this year.
How I dealt with it:
At first, I addressed the situation with name calling. If someone called me a name, I would call them a name. I didn’t get in as much trouble with the name calling as I did with violence. Violence is not the way to go when you’re being bullied because it will only result in more violence. You can’t get mad for reasons worth not getting mad at, because that will make people want to tease you even more. I stayed away from violence for a couple of years and then eventually came back to it when someone started a fight with me. He threw something at me and I attacked back. Sure, this will get people talking about you, but it wont fix things. It will keep that one person away for a while, but their anger towards you will build up and eventually they will start another fight with you. Only difference this time is they intend to do much more than punch you a few times.
If you’re having bullying problems at school, or anywhere else, tell somebody, because it’s not like you’re being a tattle-tale. If it means the bullying will stop, then you shouldn’t care if they call you a tattle-tale. The best thing to do when someone says something to you is to ignore them. If you react back, they’ll know that they’re getting to you and they will continue to call you names. If you ignore them, they’ll give up on calling you names. So instead of fighting someone or calling them names after they say something hurtful to you, ignore them and tell somebody. If you feel that you’ll be labeled a tattle-tale, tell the school anonymously and then you won’t get labeled. A good friend will back you up when you’re having bullying problems, however, a good friend would not fight for you because they know that if they fight, it won’t stop the bully from coming at you when your friend isn’t there. My friend stood up for me when he saw people calling me names. When someone started a fight with me, he stepped in and fought along side me, not for me.
How it affected my life:
The bullying affected most of my personal life. I was upset both at school and at home because of the daily bullying at school. If someone called me a name, my whole day would be ruined. I looked forward to my friends and family cheering me up. A friend, parent or even a teacher can notice when you’re feeling down, and will try to cheer you up. One small gesture is all it takes to cheer someone up, so if you see one of your friends feeling upset, talk to them, because you never know, that could change their whole day.
Types of bullying:
Cyber Bullying:
Some people choose to cyber bully because they know if they bully someone far away, they can’t do anything about it. Maybe they can’t do anything to you but they can do something to themselves. Before you say something to someone online, think about what they might do to themselves, think about all the pain you’re causing this person.
Physical Bullying:
If someone tries to fight with you, and you don’t want to fight, get your friends to back you up. Don’t encourage fighting. Instead, just calmly tell the bully to back off, and then walk away. If you fight back, the bully will know that they’re upsetting you, and they’ll continue to bug you.
Verbal Bullying:
Verbal bullies threaten you but have nothing to back their threat up. They’ll say they’re going to get their friends and they may not even have any. If someone threatens you or says something hurtful to you, either walk away, or laugh, because this shows you don’t care. If I have learned anything over my years of being bullied, it would be to ignore the bullies, because sometimes, no words can say a lot.
Exclusion:
Have you ever seen someone get excluded from something? This is bullying. In gym classes, you may play something like dodge ball. There would be two team captains who pick their teams 1 person at a time. If the captain doesn’t like you, they won’t pick you. Everyone would be picked one by one until you are the only one left, and the team that has no choice of picking you complains. Next time you decide to play a game, invite someone who’s being excluded to come play with you, because the bullies won’t realize that they’re losing something other than a game.
Did you know?
- For every 2 students, at least one of them is being bullied, or in some cases, for every 4 students, at least 3 are being bullied.
- 80% of adolescents reported being bullied during their school years.
- 90% of 4th through 8th graders report being victims
- Bullying can have long term effects on its victims.
Quotes:
A small quote from getrealchallenge.ca:
Most people walk in and out of your life……but FRIENDS leave footprints in your heart.
To The World You Might Be One Person; But To One Person You Might Be the World.
If you fall down 10 times, Stand up 11.
A Cry For Help:
If you’re having problems with bullying or any other problems, don’t hesitate to dial 1-800-668-6868. Kids Help Phone is confidential, meaning that your name will not be asked, the conversation will not be recorded and posted somewhere on the internet. If you don’t want to call Kids Help Phone, then go to www.kidshelpphone.ca and ask a counselor online by posting a question.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell my story. It is my hope that in some way I will enable you to have the courage to speak out, not only for yourself, but for others who have suffered the same abuse that I myself and many other children and adults have experienced.
Your voice has the power to make a difference.
Sarah, I’m really glad that you shared this story on you site. So many people are affected by bullying, yet few people speak of it and even fewer take action to prevent it.
Parents, if your child comes home feeling down or is acting distant, you need to delve into what is causing that behavior. It only takes one demeaning comment from a bully to ruin your child’s day. More often than not a bully persists throughout the day with his or her verbal threats and name calling. By the end of the day a child can feel completely demoralized and want nothing more that to get away from it all. That’s when they need your support; you need to keep your ears and eyes open. Even if they say that they are fine, you need to get them to open up.
For the parents out there that think that bullying is just something that a child has to learn to cope with, I say to you, bullshit! For so many years of my life I came home totally demoralized from all the bullying I had to deal with. I tried to talk about the situation with my mom and she just played it off as something kids have to deal with when growing up. I felt trapped. It was an overwhelming feeling having to get up and go to school, day in and day out, believing that there was nothing that I could do but to grin and bear it. No child deserves to experience that, and it takes a long time to come to terms with that kind of torment. Permitting a child to be a victim of bullying does not strengthen that child’s resolve or build his or her character any more that taking a bat to a car gives it character.
Everyone needs to make a stand for the victims of bullying and against the environments that permit it.
The young man in your article deserves a round of applause. Hear, hear!
I would just like to say that you have a lot of courage coming forward and sharing your story. In doing this you will help others to know that they are not alone. Standing up in front of a crowd can be scary but doing scary things in life will always show you what more you can do.
Good luck tomorrow and thank you for being the change we want to see.
- Michelle
James, good luck with everything. The best advice I can provide is find a few friends that actually care – life is not a popularity contest and the vast majority of people in this world are not worth much. Find the ones that are and stick to them and build your own safety net.
Don’t worry about what everyone thinks – worry about what the people who matter to YOU think.
Nice post, Sarah, in this anti-bullying week. I’m a high school teacher, and bullying is front and center for us. Something we have to recognize is that “zero-tolerance” for bullying has very little meaning. It’s unenforceable. For example, someone bumps into a smaller person in a crowded hallway and her books fall. Bullying? Deserving of a suspension? Good luck with the parents.
Bullies are adept. They test boundaries and know how to stay just beneath the threshold of tolerance. For the bullied, it’s the death by a thousand cuts.
So what do we do? I think we have much more success with pro-active work than with discipline. The hard core bullies are hard to hit, but we can hit the passive observers and casual bullies. They respond very well to real life, touching stories, and especially to first person testimonials like the one you included in your post. And the message has to be repeated and repeated and repeated. It’s not a war we can win utterly, but we can alter the environment a lot.
James. Ignoring is always the toughest part. Controlling your gut reaction is always a tough step and I’m glad to see that you’ve got that taken care of.
You’re an innately strong and good person (and a great writer). You have a good life ahead of yourself and it’s inspiring to see that you’re trying to get your message out there.
Godspeed.
James:
Speaking about your experiences takes tremendous courage. I believe its also the best ‘medicine’ for dealing with the effects of being bullied. When you are a victim of bullying you wonder how did you become chosen as a victim. Was it my looks, size or something I was wearing. You avoid going places, going to school or movies, start taking different routes home all to avoid being victimized. From my own childhood experiences it would seem that invisibility was only way to stop the bullying.
I look back through my past and you are right that there is no simple fix, you cannot just say “stop” and expect the bully to leave you alone. Keeping calm and responding with reserved measure may sometimes prevent conflict. Other times you can walk away, possibly run. What you have learned that I did not is that speaking out makes a difference. It says to other people that bullying exists and you do not tolerate it. You should feel proud in that you have the courage to step up and speak out publicly about what has happened to you. By telling your story other victims of bullying will come forward and speak out for themselves.
Steve
Thank you all for your support, this was a very hard topic for me to talk about because I was bullied for so long. After I presented, I felt good. The students cheered for me, and afterwards, someone stopped me and said I did a good job. I would like to thank Sarah for helping me read it over. I am considering making a website, to talk about different things such as bullying, poverty, etc.
In this domain I will be creating different articles to make people realize how bad these problems are.
Once again, thank you for all your support.
Regards,
James
Throughout my childhood I was bullied at school and at home. There was no safe place for me. Ignoring the bullying didn’t work. There was no way I could hide the pain. What I needed was someone to teach me how to verbally defend myself. That training is now available from http://www.bullies2buddies.com I have written about the long term impact of bullying on my life in Not of My Making: Bullying, Scapegoating and Misconduct. It chronicles the bullying I experienced in school which then left me vulnerable to being bullied in church.
One of the the gifts of Columbine was that it sparked a lot of research into bullying. We now know that children who are short, introverted and introspecitve are more likely to be bullied than tall, athletic males. If you are female you are less likely to be bullied if you have money, wear nice clothes and are charismatic. In order to stop bullying we must teach the victims to stand up for themselves while those in authority enforce no bullying rules. Bullies can be taught to be good leaders and bystanders can be taught to stand up for the victim instead of rooting for the bully.
[...] which was the catalyst for me writing this article. His name is James, and you can find his article here. His article is very well written. He shares what he has done to overcome bullying and what action [...]