Some Thoughts on Bullying

When it comes to the topic of bullying, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple years, there is almost no hotter topic out there. Unfortunately the bullying phenomenon is nothing new. We all grew up dealing with it in one way, shape or form.  For me and countless others out there it took a major toll. My personal plight with the attention bullying is receiving is that it’s all for nothing. If we want to talk about bullying we should be talking about at-risk youth. So as opposed to bullying being the cause for all these issues, it’s actually the alarming amount of children who are growing up at-risk these days. The youth today are completely desensitized; they lack compassion, sensitivity, understanding, patience and most importantly they lack resilience. Outside of the usual suspects such as media, government, radio, Internet, teachers, etc. who routinely get the blame for everything. Why don’t we take a good hard look in the mirror and recognize that maybe the issue is a lot closer to home than we care to acknowledge.

I agree that video games are out of control, music and television are ridiculous and the news is more of a soap opera than ever before, but is any of this new? Did all the generations before not deal with the very same issues? The problem according to me is what is going on inside the family home. Let’s be honest, who else is supposed to teach our children how to be compassionate, understanding, patient, kind and loving? Last I checked there is nobody else in this entire Universe that is responsible for teaching our young those things, that falls on us, the parents. Obviously there are many circumstances for why families are extremely strained these days, but if you decide to have children, for whatever reason, who else should pick up the slack? It’s not something you walk away from, it’s not something you throw your arms up in the air and quit over and it’s not something you allow someone else to do for you! Nothing can be more gratifying then to be a parent, but god forbid you look at your children as too much or a burden, what do you think they are going to turn out like?

When we have children who are raising themselves, children who are neglected or children who are being raised by 2 very hard working parents that can’t be around enough because they need to support the family, you are going to have at-risk youth. In other words you have youth who are at-risk of having some major difficulties and struggles as they try to grow without all the necessary tools and without the necessary knowledge to use those tools. I see it everyday with the kids I try to help, the teenagers who are sliding down a slippery slope and the young adults who are so lost you wouldn’t believe it could be possible. If kids are raised without hope and belief I really don’t know why we are so surprised when we hear about the way they behave at school. Are they mimicking what they see at home or do we want to accept that they are getting it from television? My son watches a wide variety of shows and I’m certain some parents would be shocked at what we allow him to watch, but for me the explanation is simple. I am an extremely hands on parent who is consistently assisting my son navigate his way through life. Another aspect of my life that many would frown upon, is that as opposed to being overly concerned with making a handsome living, I work from home running a business so I can be there for my son instead of being able to buy him the best of everything. I don’t miss skating lessons, baseball games or anything that I can’t control because I want him to be strong and I want him to know he always has me in his corner. If children can be raised in a manner such as this, they will have the ability to flourish, as they will feel safe, secure, confident and most importantly loved. I am not a fan of focusing on the negative, so I don’t want to talk about the ridiculously large number of children who are struggling. Instead I choose to be positive and find constructive solutions for turning this around.

We need to focus on the fact that the average child can no longer weather the storm of a bully and that is what is being ignored. We are never going to get every criminal off the streets and we are never going to get rid of bullies no matter how hard we try to come down on them. If we as adults could regularly acknowledge that bullying goes on in our adult lives far more than it ever did when we were young, just in different forms, we would be assisting our youth without doing very much. We have to strengthen our youth that are falling victim to what we have all had to deal with in our lives. We need to focus on helping the victims a hell of a lot more than we need to focus on punishing the bullies. Think about what we are doing, instead of building up a child who needs it, we give them pity and we tear down another, the bully. Even the bully needs our attention and compassion, not our wrath. These kids are crying out for attention, begging to be loved and they are tired of having the people closest to them let them down.

At The Joshua Project we are dedicated to creating as much awareness as possible, while at the same time we run programs geared towards prevention and change. We need to remind these kids at school of what they may be missing out on at home. We as a society need to stop blaming everyone and treating everyone like an enemy. We need to teach our children the meaning of a team. We need to remind our children what it’s like to want to help others and to not be satisfied with feeling like they can’t stand up for themselves. When did we stop caring if a friend was being mistreated, when did it become so easy to turn a blind eye and when did we start accepting that this is just the way things are? If we can all come together and decide that a little kid who is rude, abrasive and a bit out of control does not need a drug to calm him down unless there is a major mental illness, maybe then we will be on our way to a new tomorrow. That young boy just needs some guidance, discipline, support and love and most times you will find that is all it takes.

So lets accept that bullying is a part of growth, it’s kids expressing their individuality and it’s kids behaving like the adults that surround them and maybe if we accept it, we can teach them how to deal with it effectively. 

Amanda Todd Part 2

So I decided, after much debate and many opinions for both sides, that I had to re-visit the Amanda Todd story and post some of my thoughts and comments, as well as those that came out of my program with Horizons Shelter for Youth this morning. Before I get into this post, I feel like I should start with a disclaimer, and I wanted to include a couple of links for those of you who don't know Amanda Todd.

I would like to just be very clear that nothing that I say in the body of this post has anything to do with, or is a reflection, about how I feel about Amanda Todd taking her own life! I want to be explicitly clear when I say that this is a horrible tragedy and all I feel is sadness! All I feel is immense pain for the parents, the families, the friends and all others who now have to deal with the aftermath, and I wish more than anything that I could've prevented it. But even more than that, I wish someone, anyone, could have prevented it. That being said, I believe it could have been prevented and this blog is all about how & why I think that, as well as I have questions. Many questions in fact, and I hope that some of you, not all of you, but some, will see where I'm coming from. At the end of the day my goal is to help kids and specifically to help them avoid becoming at-risk, that means that I am willing to do and say almost anything in order to save these kids, I hope that is what you take from this!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/amanda-todd-suicide-bullying_n_1959909.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Amanda+Todd+speaks+about+daughter+death/7384521/story.html

     "Amanda was 12 years old when she made a mistake that would haunt her until her death three years later.

Her ordeal started while she was fooling around online with friends. She probably didn’t think it was risky behaviour when she lifted her top to flash the person who was flattering her at the other end of the webcam.

Amanda’s moment of indiscretion was not unusual for someone her age: Sexting and using webcams to share sexual photos is a growing trend among children, some so young they are still in grade school."

It was this specific quote from the writer of the article from the Vancouver Sun that literally made me want to lose my mind. I had to say something just for the simple fact that she was trying to pass off a 12 year old flashing her boobs online as the norm and nothing to be surprised about! If it was not unusual or out of the norm, I wonder how many of Amanda's "friends" also flashed the webcam that night?

I want to start by saying that I don't know all the in's and out's of Amanda's particular case and maybe that is why I have so many questions. Shouldn't we all want to know more? How is it so easy for so many of us to just take what we have been given and accept it as truth? What I can say is that the at-risk youth I work with twice a week, every week, are all candidates for suicide. In fact most every youngster I meet and work with in this environment has mentioned to me that they have thought about suicide or considered it in the past. The age range I work with is typically between 16-23 years old. Do you want to know what the consensus around our group discussion regarding Amanda Todd was? It wasn't the bullying that caused her to take her own life, it was the isolation and feelings of "nobody is here for me". That was the number one response I got. One young lady told me that she could relate to a lot of the same things Amanda described and her response to the situation was, "If she didn't have a good relationship with one of her parents, that is most likely the reason she took her own life."

Doesn't anyone else out there want to talk about the fact that she attempted suicide on 2 separate and previous occasions? How did she even get the opportunity for a 3rd attempt? Had nobody seen the red flags yet? Did people miss it when she came home and drank bleach? She was rushed to the hospital in order to have her stomach pumped so it definitely did not go unnoticed! Did nobody notice she had been cutting herself? 

Maybe we should go back to the beginning, or let me rephrase that, let's go back to the beginning that WE know. Around twelve years of age Amanda flashed a webcam and essentially posed for a topless photo. Maybe we should stop right there, why on gods green earth would any 12 year old engage in that type of behaviour if they weren't ALREADY AT-RISK??? Maybe if we start to understand that there were other problems in Amanda's life other than what transpired after she took this photo, then maybe we could actually get to the bottom of this story and in turn actually learn a lesson. Why haven't we heard from any of Amanda's classmates or peers? What about her teachers and principals? Wouldn't they have an opinion? 

Once again, yes it is a tragedy of mass proportions when a young girl takes their own life, but wouldn't it be even worse if we all missed out on the reason she did so? If it was a lesson she was trying to share, what was that lesson? Was there anything positive to take from Amanda's YouTube post and subsequent suicide other than she was very alone and obviously lacked the strength to keep fighting?

Do you know how angered some of the youth I work with were about this story? 

"Why should she get attention, she killed herself!" That was one response.

"Ya, maybe if she posted that video and then a couple years later she showed the world how she overcame all that and turned her life around, that would be something to talk about, but why this? It seems like we are dishonouring her in a way."

"It's almost like we are celebrating the tragedy of Amanda Todd!"

I would hope that you won't immediately write off any of these honest comments just because of who they came from, but if we are being honest, wouldn't these types of kids have the "inside track" when it comes to understanding what Amanda was dealing with?

One kid said it to me best when she said, "Suicide is about stopping the people that are constantly hurting you and most likely those are the closest people to you. Maybe she did have a tough go at it, maybe she did make some mistakes, but maybe there was nobody there to remind her that mistakes are how we learn. Maybe she was made to feel bad every time she made a mistake!"

All I'm trying to say is that if we are to benefit at all from this tragedy we must find out the cause even if some of the questions are tough to ask or answer. If this was a homicide would the coroner just walk in, look at the body, and without so much as a single test determine the cause of death? We owe it to Amanda to find out what the cause was, because whatever it was she was afraid to admit it. There was definitely something other than the bullying and online attacks that caused this to happen, that's why I have so many questions. How about you?

I work with these kids every week and I care for each and every one of them, I couldn't imagine how I would feel if one of them took their own life. But nobody would benefit if we didn't do that individual the justice they deserved and tried to learn why they did it, so that we could help the next one.

Something was going on outside of school, outside of the cyber bullying and outside of the story we are all seeing thus far. I truly hope that we learn more so that we can continue to help the "next one". If we don't, we will just be back here again in the "not so distant future", talking about another child. We need to know what was going on at home. Like I asked in the earlier paragraphs, why did this happen, who dropped the ball? Do we really want to blame or accuse the wrong people just so the majority of society can go back to sleep while we sweep Amanda Todd under the rug?

We need to think preventatively and this is a golden opportunity to learn something valuable. If parents keep blaming educators and educators keep blaming parents and they both blame the government, are we getting anywhere? If nothing else why don't the parents and educators come together and agree that we want to put an end to at-risk youth and bullying? If nothing else I think we can all agree that Amanda never got the lesson that flashing your boobs online is not the norm and it's not appropriate. She also obviously didn't get the lessons about how you definitely never want to share private things with the Internet. Yet after all the horrible things that followed you still managed to meet another boy, who lied about having a girlfriend, and when he tells you she is out of town, you go over and have sex with him. If I'm not missing anything, does that sound like an average youth, a healthy youth or an at-risk youth, which would you choose?

I wish somewhere along the way I had the opportunity to meet Amanda, maybe I would have been able to help her because one thing is certain, nobody else in her life was able to. That is what scares me the most.

Wherever Amanda is now I truly hope she has found some sort of peace and I'm fairly certain that if she could help another young person avoid going her route she would do it in a heartbeat.

Please help me in truly trying to find out what causes children to become at-risk, if we look at my favourite definition, 

      "A better definition of 'at-risk youths', is youths who are at risk of being failed by one or more adults or an adult-driven system or institution.”

we can see that something has to go wrong for these kids to end up as bullies and victims, and if it isn't out in the public, where else would it be?        

Where does Amanda fit into all this? Who failed her? Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented? Why did she have more than two opportunities to try?

I hope there are many of you who see past my harshness in determining who is accountable here and focus more on my intent and I truly hope that many of you also have questions and you haven't already forgotten about Amanda Todd.

Amanda Todd

So here we are yet again. We have another young girl, a 15-year-old by the name of Amanda Todd, who has taken her own life in British Columbia, Canada, due to bullying. The facts surrounding the incident are the young girl apparently had taken a picture of herself "flashing" the camera, which typically means nudity. The picture got on Facebook and some people started making her life a miserable hell ending in her taking her own life. I first and foremost want to talk about how ridiculous a tragedy this is and how it's an absolute waste.

Another life that could have been saved has fallen to the wayside and now families and friends and all kinds of other people have to wonder why. Now they are left to pick up the pieces and for me personally, working in this line and seeing these kinds of kids each and every day, I'm just so fed up. I'm frustrated! I don't understand how the parents of Amanda Todd are missing this and how they couldn't have prevented their daughter from taking such drastic measures. I'm sorry I have to say it, but how did you not know more? How did you miss this? Does it make me a bad person because I ask these questions? Aren't any of you thinking the same thing? On the flip-side of this coin, I can't imagine how the parents of the bullies have no idea what their kids are doing! How can you allow your children to continuously behave in this manner? I'm so tired of the, "We didn't know what our child was up to" excuse, it's time we demand more. 

I've been around these young individuals all my life. Especially the ones who were on the brink of taking their own lives, the ones who've thought about taking their own lives and the ones who survived into their adult lives thinking about taking their lives for the last 15 to 20 plus years. The number one thing that seems to come out from all of them is it's not the act of bullying or the repeated acts of bullying that made them contemplate or actually commit suicide. It was the immense feelings of desperation, the feelings of isolation, and the feelings of being completely alone. The majority of these kids all talked about how they had a lack of trust or no trust with their parents and if they had a trust with their parents they would've continually talked to their parents about what was bothering them so much. These kids all talk about being ashamed at home, believe it or not, worse than going back to school to face these kids, it was going back to face their parents that made it worse. 

It's one thing to be bullied and picked on by kids at school, it's another thing to go home and tell your father or mother and they in turn respond to you as such,"What are you a girl or a boy? You going to let little things like this bother you? Why don't you go to your room and cry about it and don't come out until you know how to be tough! I don't have time for these insignificant things"! That is what I hear all the time in my line of work. It was a feeling of worthlessness and shame that these kids held inside and it typically stemmed from lack of support and understanding from their parents. Think about it, if we know that one consistent adult in a child's life is enough to build resilience, isn't it fair to say that the ones without a consistent adult are the ones who are falling so far?  

I remember working with a young individual who routinely spoke of his bullying issues, but more than those he described how he felt worthless around his parents, how they didn't care about him or his problems and when he tried to talk to his father he was too busy, he blew him off, or he didn't validate him. To make a long story short this young man took his own life and after he did his father came out and was the loudest person you could hear screaming for justice! It was the schools fault, it was the other juvenile delinquents in the neighbourhood, it was the teacher's, it was everyone but him! I took it as his immense guilt and disappointment that would not allow him to come out and say what he really felt. "Maybe if I had been there for my son this wouldn't have happened!!!" Maybe if we stop pointing a finger in every direction but at ourselves we would see more change. Maybe if parents these days weren't insulted or slighted when another adult points out their child is struggling, then we would have a chance at change. I know this may sound crazy but I believe that a child who takes their own life is being bullied or ignored at home as much, if not more, than they are in school or online. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we all need to come together; parents, community, teachers and all other individuals and we need to say "enough is enough". We need to educate our victims, we need to educate our bystanders, we need to educate our bullies, we need to assess all these individuals and we need to stop blaming. We also need to stop generalizing, and stop thinking that punishment and labelling is the best way to deal with these kids. Enough is enough there's got to be a better way and we need to accept that nothing we are doing is working. How many more kids, how many more videos, and how many more suicides? We all got to watch more of what's going on in our kids lives!

We at The Josh Project are trying to make that difference. As a former victim of bullying and then the one who was rejected because he fought back, I have dedicated my life to making a difference in the lives of at-risk youth. We need a more balanced approach and we must start as young as possible. Why not start these programs that begin for Kindergarten age and go all the way up to graduating students? The more we educate, the more effect it will have on the decisions these children and youth are making in their day to day lives.

Do we really have to accept or believe that these kids have free reign over everything and that parents have no idea and teachers have no idea? Who does have an idea and what are we willing to do about it? Why do we have so many parents that don't know what their 14 and 15 year olds are doing? What is this world we live in? It's unfathomable to me that the parents or schools cannot intervene and do more.

The schools should have mandated programs, the school staff should have mandated parameters to take action and act on situations and there needs to be serious checks and balances in place that allow those who are given the charge to educate our children to be held more accountable if they do not take more preventative measures.

Please find a way to do more, www.JoshuaStern.ca, every life is important let's start acting that way."

A Bit About Me and Why I Do What I Do!

For those of you who are unaware, I am a writer, youth advocate, life coach and a mentor. I truly enjoy all of those positions and I truly feel fulfilled because I have the opportunity to make a difference in somebodies life. Writing is obviously very near and dear to me because I am able to share my experiences, my views on the world and for the most part I try to write stories that make people think. My aim is to hopefully teach a lesson or convey an important thought or message to all my readers. Outside of simply trying to entertain you and obviously be exciting, my main focus is to always engage the reader and try to share some knowledge with them. There's always a point to why I write and typically I'm trying to save you from going down the same paths I, my friends, or my characters have gone down themselves.

It's very important for me that when I write there is a purpose, and I want it to be clear that I'm not just writing to sell books. I hope that throughout sharing my purposes and my messages with you that I also entertain you, and I hope that you recognize that it's all tied into The Josh Project and the work I do with at-risk youth. So for example, every book I sell, 50% of the proceeds goes right back to the Josh Project and in turn we are able to create more programs for kids. I am essentially helping to protect the kids from going down the same roads I went down and they don't even have to read my books. I would like people to read my books and see the stories I'm trying to share, then by supporting me and my writing, you are also supporting the youth in your local community. Sounds like a win to me. Entertaining story for you and more programs and community centers for the kids.

In a strange kind of way it's actually something I've been working on for the last two years and I hope that the public and the community can actually get on board and start supporting what I believe is a really amazing initiative. If we all live in a society together why are we supporting actors, writers, filmmakers, entertainers and comedians that don't support us? We need to get back to the time where we understand the value of a dollar and if we spend our dollars, our hard earned dollars, we should feel good about who we're spending our money with and we should demand that we get something back for the money that we spent. That is the definition of value, I don't enjoy just throwing money away. 

In other words if I go to a movie, and these days I'm spending about $20 per person and that might not even get me a drink and a ticket for the show, I'd like to know that the actors or film company I'm supporting are also supporting me and my community. Am I really that crazy or out of line for having these types of expectations? If in Canada, where I live for example, we spent 500 million dollars on American movies and the American actors or film
companies don't spend a penny to help improve or support Canada, why are we still supporting them? Maybe we should support some Canadian films who in turn build schools in our home towns? Maybe we should make these companies be more aware of how and where they make their money, and who it is that should reap the rewards? I'm all for helping others, but isn't the golden rule that we fix our own house first, then we go and help fix others houses? I'm very happy to see actors helping kids in Africa, but when you still have a major problem with the youth in your own backyard, shouldn't we take care of that first?

Now I know it's a bit of a strange thought and I know you might be wondering how did I come up with such a thought. Well in keeping with a lot of the stories I share, the work that I do and who I actually am, I had a dream about it and it was a very vivid one. As usual when I have one of these vivid dreams, I wake up and I write down some of the finer parts of that dream and in my dream it seemed like a fabulous idea. Why wouldn't I spend money with somebody who wants to spend money with me? Isn't that the natural progression of how sales even began? It's the natural way to get a good deal, why would I spend $20 and get nothing in return? That makes no sense to me.

I truly believe the time is now for a major shift in our consciousness if we can all start to understand and believe that there is more out there than meets the eye then maybe we can once again see a mild form of evolution. Let's have a big conscious shift and I guarantee we can initiate change and we can make things happen, but we have to believe it's possible and we have to start thinking outside the box. If we can get to that point then we might actually start to see some of the changes we've been yearning for for as long as I've been on this earth and I'm sure longer. For example, if when I told people I had dreams as a child that I could remember and write down, then I'd watch as the majority of what I wrote would come true, and the initial reaction wasn't, "are you crazy", then I'd know we were closer to change.

To learn more about The Josh Project and what we are trying to accomplish, please visit us at www.JoshuaStern.ca

As always your support is needed and necessary!! Thank you for taking the time!