Wow, I'm surprised that those academic numbers are so staggering. I would love for bullying to stop. I know I still carry around self-esteem and self-harm issues from even mild bullying (I was a weird little girl with scars on my face). But what I don't know is: how do you stop it? Is punishment enough or is there some sort of behavioral therapy that works?
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Punishment is just a consequence to their negative behavior. They need psyche info to understand why it's bad and why not to do it, and why they even were doing it. Healing their fractured psyche is required so that they stop doing harm. Information is required. They don't do it on their own hehe.
Some studies indicate that bullies are actually sadists who enjoy causing harm/humiliation over those who are weaker or more vulnerable in some way. Schools should not tolerate this behavior and act to protect the victims, but I'm not sure if there is any type of punishment that will eradicate it completely. It may just be an unfortunate fact that a small percentage of people are just plain mean. More awareness of the issue is good, as well as encouraging kids to stick up for and support their less popular peers, and to be rewarded for this behavior and given support in it. I was bullied in middle school. My tactic was to ignore it, which worked pretty well although there was one huge truck of a girl that wanted to fight me. I was willing to do it because sometimes you just have to fight back as that's the only thing a bully understands. Luckily though, my mother intervened and talked to the girl and flattered her a bit which worked. Whew, that was a close one! That was a miracle too because one of the reasons this kid wanted to fight me was because I had stuck up for another kid, a boy, that she was bullying, by committing the cardinal sin of telling my mother who went and broke up the fight. I think if the message that 'bullying isn't cool' is promoted enough along with 'sticking up for each other is cool', then bullies won't have so many available victims to pick on.
Yup, sadly, you have it right ;)
GREAT idea! Incentivise standing for whats right. Awesome :)
Thanks for the great feedback.
Yeah, I wouldn't expect punishment to do the trick (just look at our prisons). It would be a fascinating job to figure out what kinds of messages and practices can prevent bullying.
Understanding self + others as part of reality and living in morality.