Here is a special chapter from my upcoming book "At-Risk Youth; Awareness, Prevention, Change". It specifically focuses on Bullying.
Bullying
Largely in part to the enormous public outcry and generous media attention, the topic of bullying is a very popular one currently. Even celebrities such as Lady Gaga and President Obama have weighed in on the issue and so naturally we decided to as well. I for one am extremely happy to see all the support this initiative is garnering, but I do have one major reservation. Why when it comes to bullying are we only focusing on the victims? Are the kids who are carrying out the acts of bullying not victims themselves?
The very first point I’m going to make on this subject, and you may want to sit down for this, is that bullies are at the very least as at-risk, if not more, than the victims. I want to make it clear that there are no winners when it comes to being a bully, or being bullied, and I definitely don’t want to take anything away from any one individual. If a child or youth feels at-risk, no matter what anyone else’s viewpoints on the subject are, that person IS at-risk. Couldn’t a bully very well have been a victim in his or her past? Couldn’t a victim of bullying eventually become a bully?
If I haven’t made it abundantly clear by now that we cannot trivialize any child’s feelings or thoughts, I’m going to try again. They do not have the capacity or tools to deal with the emotions of adults, yet that is exactly the world they face today.
Bullying is just one aspect of the at-risk youth phenomenon, but because several high profile people have started to highlight it, all of a sudden everyone wants to rid the world of all bullies. I have one question for you, if a 10-15 year old is bullying other kids, and to the point that it is extreme, what do you think that bully’s life is like outside of school? To bring up one of my earlier points again, if you had two kids who were both being bullied by the same person and to the same degree, what do you think leads to one of those kids potentially becoming at-risk and the other avoiding it? We suggest that its what transpires inside the victim’s house when he or she goes home and talks to their parents about it. If the victims parents take the time to communicate properly, there’s that communicate word again, and explain things to that individual, statistics show that will do an enormous amount of good to offset the impact of the bully. Whereas it is quite the opposite when a victim turns to his family or support system and they in turn blow the kid off, or trivialize what that individual is feeling, that can lead to major problems. When you look at it from that angle, its almost as if the bully is not responsible for what happens to that kid in the long run!? Think about it, when you were young how many kids, including yourself, escaped some form of bullying or schoolyard harassment? Did everyone end up at-risk?
In Ontario, Canada they are trying to pass an Anti-Bullying legislation that would allow any bully to be expelled from school, and Lady Gaga is trying to have bullying classified as a hate crime in the United States. Obviously we have to deal with the victim’s, and try our hardest to make them understand this is not the way society operates, but if we expel bullies, aren’t we just compounding the problem? We must find a way to understand what is making these kids act in such a negative manner. We need to have more programs available that can help these kids who are clearly suffering from a variety of issues outside of the school setting, which is contributing to why they are bullying others. Especially when you take into account the world that we currently live in. Does a bully really need to be at school to be successful? Would a bully who is clearly at-risk have the wherewithal to learn his lesson from expulsion and not seek retribution? What about what happens to these kids as they get into the later stages of their teenage years? Are they going to be rehabilitated, or are they going to become future risks to the society we are working so hard on changing? As we stand right now the majority of at-risk youth end up as alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, and all the other negative connotations you can think of. That is a future we must change.
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