Is There a Free-Range Way to Deal with REAL Recess Bullying?

Let’s be honest, the world of children is just like the one adults live and work in. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to like each other and to enjoy each other’s company. However, that is no excuse for bullying behavior.

Those few excluded kids deserve friends too, so you should everything you can to avoid having the bullies influence their decisions. That play coaching Jill mentioned is a good idea too. Finally, if you come across evidence of bullying behavior, don’t hesitate to mention it to parents. There is only so much you can ignore…

I like the idea of having a semi-structured recess, emphasizing cooperative over competitive play, for bullying. I don’t think free range works well in large groups- I think kids, like adults, are subject to group think and can becoming bullies in those situations. There needs to a referee, there needs to be rules, and there needs to be a selection of activities to choose from.

A while back I was reading about a study done about bullying- basically, they watched kids and tried to figure out what behaviors the kids naturally displayed that decreased the bullying. Basically, the victim can’t do anything- stand up or not, walk away or not, the victim will be bullied. However if a bystander stands up for the victim, even if that bystander is also bullied, the bully will usually stand down. So I think trying to create a culture where other children stand up (with words and body language) for their peers who are treated unfairly is really where we need to go. This is also the badly we want to see when they grow up- the altruistic, stand up for what’s right, behavior.

There was another model I read about, where they paired up kids in buddies across social boundaries (popular with unpopular, etc) and had “buddy recess” and “buddy time” where the students had to do something with that person. I like that idea for breaking down clique behavior.

I have a rule when it comes to bulling or my kids fighting with others, it’s that unless it is disrupting our lives at home ( coming home crying, trouble sleeping, not wanting to go to school basically starting to annoy me ) I don’t get involved, kids can make up quickly leaving the parents fighting, I tell my kids to stand up for themselves, and although not P.C. To fight back, telling teachers etc honestly does sweet F.A, we did it for 12 months until I got angry and told my daughter to give it to her…( not my finest parenting moment hehe) she came home that day happy, she waited till this girl was alone in the toilets-her idea not mine, pushed back up to the wall and pointing in her face said ‘ YOU! Shut your mouth and tell your mother to shut hers too… Or I will punch you’ ( they where 9 or 10) then she told her ‘ and don’t you dob either because you started it’ from that day we never had a problem, in year 8 she was on the bus when a year 12 girl tripped a boy who was over weight and not as popular my girl did it again for this boy, and had the year 12 scared ( maybe more shocked a lowly yr 8 would take in a yr 12).
As a teacher you unfortunately can’t do any of this.
And the only thing that stops bullies is for the kid being bullied to be able to get the courage and confidence to stand up for themselves and fight back. But to tell a kid that these days is apparently on the same bad parenting level as supplying them with heroin…

Molly-
Kudos for seeing it and wanting to change it. That being said OMG!!! it’s gotten so bad the targeted child doesn’t want to go to school anymore?? Holy Smokes! 1) it’s been going on a lot longer than you suspect. 2) It’s going on at more than just recess.

Saying: “Play nice at recess” WILL NOT help. You need to make it VERY clear that excluding and name calling is NOT ACCEPTABLE AT ALL. You need to hold the bullies back from recess the second they put a toe out of line. The parents need to be told, in no uncertain terms, that their kids are disruptive to the social fabric and that you will be dealing with their behavior at school. The parents need to be made aware and most likely will continue to model poor behavior at home -just know this is who they are. The principal needs to have your back on this one.

You also need to work with the bullied kids to prop them up a little and give them tools to fight back. Their parents may not have the social ability to help their kids deal with bullies.

The third thing you need to do is decide whether this is the school for you. I’ve known several teachers who have stepped away from small schools (rural or private) for this very reason….the parents turn into bullies when they believe their brat children are being unfairly punished and will gang up on the teacher who is trying to keep harmony in the classroom.

My story is: I was picked out as the “weird kid” because I spoke a 1st language other than English at home. At school I had an accent, and the kids made fun of it. I didn’t have the social skills to put the kids in their place and ended up being their target for 6 years during primary school. I had a cap gun put to my ear before school started, kids bumping my desk, knocking things off my desk, stealing my things, pinching, etc all without the teacher knowing. Kids are REALLY good at doing things when teachers aren’t looking. I hated going to school and ended up dropping out in my junior year because I was over the whole school scene. Turns out, the main bully’s dad was head of the American Heart Assn -a very high powered MD who had no time for his three sons. Matt was the youngest and treated me the way his brothers treated him. He apologized nearly 20 years later, but it was too late by then though it has helped ease the anxiety around school a little. And FYI, I just finished my Master’s degree, it is possible to go back and make it right.

I wish there would have been a teacher like you who would have stood up for me. So, good luck. A helpful read for me was “Odd Girl Out” by Rachel Simmons; it talks in detail about how bullies operate.

The thing is that kids don’t come into the world knowing how to socialize nicely anymore than they come into the world knowing anything else. And fellow children are not their best teachers as they are also socially inexperienced and immature. I’m not going to leave teaching my child how to drive in the hands of her recently licensed teenage friend so I don’t leave lessons on how to make and be a friend completely in the hands of her fellow children.

That doesn’t mean that we need to jump in at the first sign of conflict, but it does mean that children need adult guidance in learning and understanding what is proper social behavior and that sometimes means structured play.

My daughter has had two mean girls in her life thus far. One, both sets of parents realized the situation and we worked on good socialization skills with both our kids. In the end, her daughter became nicer and mine a little better at being able to walk away when A was being a brat. I was still kinda happy to have the relationship end when we left Samoa because I didn’t particularly like the other girl, but it stopped being a toxic relationship for my child long before then.

The second, the mother refuses to intervene. She sees what her daughter is doing but minimalizes her daughter’s responsibility and ultimately believes that the kids will just work it out. This girl, who I don’t really think is as innately unpleasant as the other one, is learning bad social skills and having them reinforced by a lack of anyone telling her that what she is doing is wrong. She will continue to do what she is doing, not because she is truly a bad person, but because this is working for her and nobody is telling her otherwise. Luckily, my daughter peaced-out of the whole relationship once S started her antics so it doesn’t really affect us any more.

Bullying is an extremely complicated problem, one which school policy alone can not solve. Part of the problem is that of zero tolerance policies. The bullied child has no recourse but to report the problem to an adult where-upon, both parties sometimes are punished (I got a 24 hour suspension just for taking a blow to the stomach, same as the kid that punched me). Then there is the stigma for being the one to report (being called a snitch and ostracized for it is never fun). Of course there are the smart bullies that lie either to avoid trouble or to get another student in trouble. Zero tolerance just doesn’t work. You can tell a tornado that destroying property is not allowed in your county, but a force of nature doesn’t care, neither do bullies. Report the problem to the parents and provide documentation (hide a camera if necessary). That’s all a school can do short of calling the cops, which never looks good.

I say, give individual students their option whether they play in an unstructured recess, play in organized sports during recess, or stay inside in a supervised classroom with a selection of indoor activities (open the library, the kids will love it). Some kids, bullied or bullies, don’t like being around each other and are better off in separate places doing different things.

This won’t sound politically correct, but have weekly martial arts or self defense instruction to which documented bullies are not invited or will be expelled from. If a bully knows he (or she) risks having the crap kicked out of him, that can be a serious deterrent, not to mention there is the benefit of earning the right to be with the well behaved kids having fun. Ooh! And the exercise!

Obviously, I’m just dreaming. Not a single one of these ideas will be implemented, but still, it’s fun to consider a world where children are empowered and given the tools to deal with bullies.

‘bullying’….

E – I agree in part with what you are saying. I do think that, if the class is going outside for recess, then the ENTIRE class is going outside for recess. But recess is not PE class. It is supposed to be relaxation time, not work. The kids should be allowed to do whatever they want to do. That means that acceptable activities should include playing games and sitting alone while reading a book.

I like the idea of giving kids something else to do besides being on the playground. I was not at all popular from grades 5-8 and sixth grade was an especially low point. Sometime in the middle of the year, I wandered into the library during lunch and asked the librarian if there was anything I could do to help her, and from that point on, I spent most of my lunch periods dusting and shelving books. I was a book lover already, so I felt comfortable and safe in the library, and it was a wonderful refuge. I’ve always wondered whether the librarian knew why I was there – I’m guessing she probably did, but she never said anything directly to me about it. (I actually got a special citizenship award the end-of-the-year assembly for my “volunteer work.”) I suppose you could make a case that kids shouldn’t be allowed to hide from bullies, but based on my experience, there are plenty of times throughout the school day when they’ll have to deal with the bullies anyway, so why not give them half an hour of respite?

I agree mostly with Ali 11:08 and Christine 11:45.

And the addition of a martial arts class is a great idea. If parents don’t teach their kids how to fight back against bullies, then perhaps the school can provide such instruction.

However, if you are aware of the more advanced, organized scheme involving “ringleaders,” then those ones must be expelled.

@Scott Lazarowitz–There are plenty of moves in martial arts that don’t actually involve hurting people. You can duck, block, jump out of the way of your attacker, etc. So, I wouldn’t see martial arts as encouraging kids to “hit back,” necessarily; but rather, just giving them the skills they need to protect themselves. It’s also good exercise, of course, but that’s just a bonus.

“You need to make it VERY clear that excluding and name calling is NOT ACCEPTABLE AT ALL.”

On the level of principle, I agree with this. Not acceptable. Wrong. Not “just kid stuff.” Not “they’ll work it out.”

But, on a practical level, how do you make kids “not exclude?” You can’t force inclusion, you just can’t. If you force some kind of superficial inclusion, that rapidly turns into an opportunity for a different, and possibly more vicious, kind of bullying.

I don’t want to say it’s hopeless but I’ve yet to see a workable solution. Hopefully there’s one out there somewhere.

I was bullied in school. Here’s my thought. Children in school need to stop being punished for responding in reasonable ways. For example, I instructed my kids that if someone messes with them, their first act should be to loudly, confidently state: “you are not allowed to ___ me.” Loud enough for the teacher and everyone else to hear it. Then the teacher is on notice that there is a problem. An older kid should be allowed to push the person away physically while saying that, if the threat is physical. Or even throw a punch if necessary.

Unfortunately, in school, kids who try to stand up for themselves get punished for it. Often these are the kids who have a squeaky clean record, the rule-abiders, and they would rather put up with nonsense than get in trouble for defending themselves. When my nephew fought back a little, even though he was the only one who ended up injured, he was expelled (the aggressor with the record of violence was not). The message to bullied kids is clear: suck it up.

Donna–I didn’t think of the “staggered recess” scenario. When I was in school, everyone had recess at the same time. The only exception was in high school, during the years when we had higher-than-usual enrollment, we had to have two separate lunch periods, but people on lunch or spares were still allowed to use the library, music room, art studio, graphics/yearbook/photography room, gymnasiums, weights room, etc., while classes were being held there. The only exception was the tech shops, because there wouldn’t have been enough equipment to go around. Other than that, free time was free time. Of course, we were warned very firmly not to disrupt classes that were happening in rooms that we were using during our breaks, and we mostly didn’t, because we knew it was a privilege, and troublemakers would be kicked out of that room for the day. Anyway, some people would leave campus to get fast food, and others did kind of sketchy things, like fighting/smoking/making out behind the arena that was next door to our school, but a lot of other people used that time as self-directed learning time, without any prompting at all. Often, student groups would collectively choose to meet during lunch during busy times (for example, I was on student council, and we met at lunch all the time during Spirit Week, either instead of or in addition to our Tuesday afternoon time slot), because they knew that other people had other activities/responsibilities after school, and that was the only time they could get everyone together. Now, if lunch/break/whatever had been rigidly structured, so as to require everyone to be in a specific place, or to gather on the blacktop and play Octopus (for example), all of that opportunity for growth and personal development would have been lost. When I was in grades 5-8, the library or computer room option was offered intermittently, for a while, but it was eventually phased out, and I was sad when it was, because I felt that my autonomy was being taken away.

@Really Bad Mum – your kids’ schools must love you! Wish we could clone you. Even around here, land of even less posh sheilas (geez I love that word, LOL!) too many of our parents these days think their kid can do no wrong. Even had a parent the other day shouting at the principal that his daughter ‘never lies’. Kid is actually a habitual liar, whom we sympathize with – she mostly does it to avoid dad yelling at her – but, yep, she’s an angel who does no wrong. Yet another Tui billboard (yeah, right) moment….

@Pentamom – I don’t think that you should even want to force inclusion. People, even young people, have a right to decide who they want to play with and when they want to play with them. Not everyone is ever going to get along or enjoy each other’s company. And it is okay to want to play with different groups of kids or for smaller subgroups of one larger friend group to occasionally get together without the whole. That is all perfectly normal.

What you have to enforce is not being mean about it. It is one thing for Susie and Janie to not want to play with Annie because they don’t like Annie. It is another entirely for Susie and Janie to be mean to Annie, to run and hide from Annie and stop Betty and Cassie from playing with Annie too. That is all readily identifiable and needs to be combated.

One way to combat it is to work with the kids. This goes back to kids don’t just KNOW intuitively how to be positively social. We, even here, tend to view bullies as bad kids but much that I see is just socially inexperienced kids. My daughter doesn’t get the concept that someone can occasionally want to play with alone with another kid and still be her friend (we’re working on it). She is likely to feel hurt and then retaliate the next day, starting down a bad road unless stopped.

>>Emily — You are talking about high school and this writer is talking about elementary school. HUGE difference in maturity, self-control and both the ability to sit in a library while a class is going on without being a distraction and the ability to sit in a class and focus on the lesson while other kids are in the room doing their own thing.<<

Donna, I could have managed that fairly early on; maybe by the time I was eight or nine. Back then, the public library had a separate area for special programs, etc., but it wasn't in a separate room, so I was used to either using the library without disrupting the programs, or if I was participating in a program, to remain engaged in the activity without wandering off into the stacks. Those are important skills to learn, and elementary school is as good a time as any to teach them.

@SKL
“Unfortunately, in school, kids who try to stand up for themselves get punished for it.”

Exactly. You’re not going to get justice through ‘the system’. You’re going to have to go outside it, one way or another.

It amazes me in this age of “getting tough” on everything and anything, bullies seem to be the exception and are treated with kid gloves. The answer is to physically thrash them until they stop.

I also agree with you that a lot of “exclusion” is just poor social skills and communication — a kid not wanting to play with another kid is not always being mean, sometimes they just don’t know how to communicate that well and/or the other kid can’t grasp that there can be preferences in playmates or activities without hostility. So teaching them better communication and social skills covers that.

But it doesn’t cover the situations where one or more kids are made into pariahs and it’s cool to exclude them and social suicide to include them in anything. Those are the tricky cases that I had in mind. When that happens, the kids are in most cases defying the minimum standard of social behavior that they’ve already been taught — they just WANT to be mean to another kid for some reason, or are afraid of bucking the mean kids. That’s a problem that starts more in the later elementary grades, I think.

>>People here seem to have an overwhelming inability to understand that schools need to meet the needs of hundreds of children and not just you (or yours), and they need to do so as efficiently as possible as there is not an overabundance of resources, human or otherwise. Sometimes that means that everyone’s individual wants are not going to be able to be met.<<

Donna, I don't see the need for a young person who's being bullied to feel safe at school, or the need for an introverted person (no matter what age) to have a break from being around hordes of others over the course of a six-or-more-hour school day, to be merely a "want," but rather, a "need," and with the current model of recess being either "everyone outside to play," or "everyone outside for structured games," those needs, for those students, are going unmet EVERY day. The population of students who feel this way seems to be larger than most school officials think, judging by the response on here, and yet, a lot of those kids feel alone, like they're the only one. Maybe if kids in school had more options for recess–indoors or out, rambunctious or quiet–then the quieter kids might meet each other over their common interests, and become friends. Of course this would be harder to implement in a school that does "staggered recess" like your daughter's school, but there's really no good reason why it wouldn't work in a traditional school setting, where everyone has recess at the same time. After all, the population of the school is the same, and it wouldn't take as many teachers to supervise students reading or playing board games quietly in the library, as it would to supervise students running around on the playground, so with a little ingenuity, it could probably work. Also, I'm sure that there would be at least a few teachers who'd much rather supervise the library or the computer room at recess, than be outside in the dead of winter, and then there are some helicopter parents who are always clamouring to volunteer at their kids' schools, so this would be a good way to put them to work, by ironically having them help make "free-range recess" happen. In other words, it'd take some effort to make it work, but I really think that the benefits would outweigh the potential hurdles.

JB, I saw that article about the “Buddy Bench” too, and I think it’s a great idea. I also feel that recess needs to be much more closely supervised than it often is. At my kids’ elementary school, there was a job called “yard duty” which was often filled by local parents. Frankly they weren’t all that much help most of the time, but I think if they’d been trained better, they could have done more. For a while, there was also a program that trained students in playground conflict resolution. Our older neighbors participated and seemed to like it, but unfortunately it was discontinued by the time my kids reached upper elementary age.

The elementary school where I volunteer now has Playworks recess, and although I have to admit that I was initially dubious about it, the kids I’ve spoken to about it all like it a lot.

Anyway, I think the bottom line is that if you want to change playground behavior, you have to take concrete action rather than just talking about it. All the kids need tools to change their behavior — both the bullied and the bullies. It’s hard sometimes, but so important, to remember that even kids who are behaving very badly are really just kids. That doesn’t mean accepting their behavior — it means finding a way to teach them to change it.

Good luck! It sounds like a difficult situation.

I have a great memory of being at a small school (30 kids), like your school their was minimal teacher supervision.

A student was responsible for ringing the bell to return to class. He always did it, BUT we knew that occasionally if we could get the entire school participating in a game (ie rounders, which is a version of softball) and if we were all playing well and everyone was playing and we *accidently* forgot to ring the bell…. we knew the teachers would allow us to keep playing. A 15 minute recess stretched into hours of playing a game together. We would play right through class time, through our regular lunch until a teacher would ring the bell to signal the end of lunch.

It is a strong memory. I remember if a younger student was hurt, or if two people started getting annoyed, we would quickly band together and hush it up, reminding each other that we would be allowed to stay out playing if we played well.

This is not an ongoing solution (or even an immediate one) but I want to throw out the idea that somewhere, within a small school environment, there is the option of doing the opposite… of creating more responsibility as a solution, rather than taking it away.

I also loved this idea that a 2nd grader came up with: The Buddy Bench http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/second-grader-buddy-bench_n_4378248.html

I don’t understand. You know who the bullies are. Three or four kids. Discipline those 3 or 4 kids. Pull them into the principal, lecture them, make it known the behavior will not be tolerated, and make them sit out recess for a day or two. Adults don’t need to play alongside or structure recess. They just need to discipline the bullies. Not talk to the whole class about bullying in the abstract – discipline the actual individual bullies. Pull them from recess. How hard is that?

>>Adults don’t need to play alongside or structure recess. They just need to discipline the bullies. Not talk to the whole class about bullying in the abstract — discipline the actual individual bullies. Pull them from recess. How hard is that?<<

Sky, that's one solution, but there's a pretty glaring hole in it–the bullies, the bullied kids, and the world in general, continues to exist outside of school hours. I had this problem when I was in grade four, and no matter how many times Bully Kid was kept in from recess, he could still beat me up on the way home from school. The school's solution was actually to dismiss him earlier than me. I didn't mind this arrangement on its face, because I didn't want to miss anything important in school, and also, I had to walk my then-six-year-old brother home each day, so altering my departure time would have meant altering his as well. However, when Bully Kid started lying in wait for me behind a snow bank, well, that's when I realized that something was really wrong. I mean, there's disliking someone, and there's lashing out against someone when forced to be in the same place as that person (like at school), but there is no earthly reason why anyone, especially a nine-or-ten-year-old kid, should be ACTIVELY SEEKING PEOPLE OUT to antagonize them. I think that that crosses the line from "bullying" into "mental illness."

I really LOVE the idea of the junior coaches!

My personal experience with that kind of behaviour (directed at my daugther) is that:
– counting on kids to ask teachers for help when they feel threatened does not work well at all. Even the one teacher does not react in a consistent way every time, so having to ask whatever teacher is on playground duty at the time is really a hit and miss affair. And it is not a good solution for kids that feel easily intimidated by authority and adults. But the bullies/anti-social kids usually have no such restrictions which can make matters worse instead of better for the victims. Also, if a teacher only once or twice doesn’t follow it up or take it seriously (and kids do exaggerate, it’s an easy mistake to make), the bullied child will lose confidence in this as a viable solution.
– It’s all good and well to encourage a child to stand up for themselves but I happen to have a child who – though not particularly shy nor lacking in courage in other areas – won’t even scream loudly when she is being threatened, let alone kick someone (which is what I have instructed her to do on a couple of occasions!). She would find it embarrassing to do that. And things get worse when the bullies are perceived to be friends. I have on various occasions waited and waited for my girl to finally see that friends like that are just not worth the emotional agony they caused her, but nothing can make her abandon her loyalty to her friends. Reading “Get Up and Get Along!” helped her somewhat with strategies to counter bullying and teasing, but only marginally.
– Assigning one single buddy to a child is not enough. That was the system they had in my child’s school when she started school at 5. She liked her buddy but she didn’t feel comfortable enough around her to go ask her for help. And they only did it one year, pairing a kindy kid with a year 6 kid.

So I think junior coaches, that would have a fairly broad role of assisting with social conflict in the playground, could work quite well in a school environment too. After all, who could understand playground politics better than a child?

@ Lin it’s a horrible feeling when your situation happens personally when my kids where acting that way I went back and forward between feeling sad for them and wanting to help to getting annoyed because we know they have to stand up for themselves which is easier said then done. In the end with my son I said to him if you aren’t going to at least try to stand up for yourself then I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t encourage this for others but for him I needed to draw a line. When it is a so called friend I say to them if you are going to choose to be friends with that person knowing what they do then too bad,

@RBM ” In the end with my son I said to him if you aren’t going to at least try to stand up for yourself then I don’t want to hear about it.”

sadly all too many victims of relentless bullying end up being the ones punished when they do decide to “stand up for themselves”.
They fight back, take a swing at their tormentor the next time he starts beating them up, bloody the guy’s nose or split his lip, guy runs to a teacher and their victim gets suspended or probation, or whatever other punishment the school sets for fighting. The hundred times before however that he didn’t stand up and instead complained himself about being beaten, that same teacher never took action. (and all too often their parents will then punish them more for that, for giving the family a bad name, etc., even after they’d first told him to stand up for himself)

Such is all too often the situation with victims of bullying, leading to them becoming isolated, outcasts, depressed, and eventual suicide statistics (or national headlines when they take a gun and shoot up a classroom full of their tormentors before being taken down and vilified on national TV).

@Emily, I realize a lot of posts have gone on between yours and mine, but I don’t really think that differently between non-academic activities (music, pe) and recess. It’s part of the school day plan and it’s designed to give the kids and teachers a break. I’m not advocating organized activities (my kids never had any), so a child should be able to do whatever they want (or nothing) during the very brief recess time. Every school my kids attended had staggered breaks so again, availability for multiple ‘things’ at different places in the school was not feasible.

It’s a very brief period of time. If a child is being bothered by other students, the teachers/staff should address it just like they do any other time of day. If it isn’t your kid’s favorite part of the day, well it lasts about 20 minutes?

Again, this seems like an over complication of the original issue. If a kid is a “real bully” then there should be “real consequences”. Schools should know how to do this, shouldn’t they?

E–Your mileage may vary, but we certainly had proper art classes in elementary school, and proper music classes if there was a teacher around who knew something about music. Drama was a bit spotty, but I remember being involved in a few different school plays. We definitely had proper music classes in high school, and drama, art, and the whole shebang, and in fact, I actually went on to major in music in university, and then later helped run a children’s music camp with a friend of mine, so for you to put music class on par with recess, is actually pretty offensive to me.

As for the problem with staggered recess making it impossible to offer multiple options for recess, maybe the solution would be to have just one “indoor recess room,” where the kids who didn’t want to go outside could read, draw, play board games, listen to music on headphones, etc. Like I said, when I was in school, everyone followed the same schedule, so it wasn’t even a case of not having enough available space; the teachers just couldn’t be bothered. As for “even if it’s not your kid’s favourite part of the day, it lasts 20 minutes,” well, that 20 minutes can feel much longer to a child who’s freezing cold, or being teased, bullied, or excluded, or for the child who just needs some alone time, but knows that that’s not going to happen for several more hours. Recess is supposed to be a much-needed break in a long school day, and for a lot of kids, being herded out onto a noisy playground ISN’T a break for them. Also, lunch recess for us was between 40 and 60 minutes long, not 20.

Why not just punish the bullies?

Don’t get me wrong but we always know what to do about kid’s behavior but then, when it comes to bullying we get all, OMG, I have no idea what to do?

Find out the kids who are doing it and make them stop. And let them know that any sort of retaliation with also be punished. And explain it to them so they understand.

Bullies get to be bullies because no one stands up to them or stands up for their victims. I am so tired of people wondering what to about this problem. The only reason people question what to do about a bully is because they secretly think that people, even kids who are still learning to navigate the world, should always have to stand up for themselves.

In an adult and civilized society, we stand up for each other and we stand together.

Punish the bullies. Swiftly and without apology or without making excuses for their behavior – and let their parents know. Maybe you’ll teach their gossiping parents a lesson too.

School, had traditionally been viewed as a haven from the disorders of everyday life. The proverb: “It is easy to frighten a bull from the window.” Means: When protected from retribution it becomes all too easy to frighten and torment someone more powerful than yourself. Thus in the past we associated the school- bully with size and aggression, whereas now technology has brought us the cyber-bully an anonymous wannabe who is more likely to be witless and timid. Strong men with sharp minds who can afford to be gentle and kind.Bullies like you who can only be cruel to support your malevolent mind. Remind your self that you are a God’s masterpeice and don’t accept the judgement of others your beautiful in your own way. Keep safe and protected bring it check this out at http://safekidzone.com/#!/page_home.

“I’m sure that there are homeschooling families that hover over their kids a *LOT*. Just like we have Tiger-moms that don’t homeschool. But I have no reason to believe that homeschoolers are any more controlling than any other parents (popular stereotypes aside).”

I wish I could state it quite THAT strongly. But I do think that homeschoolers as a group are at least *somewhat* more likely to hover. However, that’s a choice, or maybe in many cases the impetus for homeschooling rather than an effect. Plenty of us don’t, because that’s not how we raise our kids and homeschooling doesn’t change that.

The having to please your parents all day long thing the other commenter said just sounds weird to me — my relationship with my kids and my teaching of them is not about them “pleasing” me — they’re free to do what they want as long as it is within the bounds of what we expect from them as human beings. They don’t do their math to “impress Mom,” they do it to learn it, because people have to learn stuff. They don’t clean their rooms to “make me happy,” they do it because that’s part of what people do when they share living space with other people. The whole idea of either the teacher/student or parent/child relationship being about “pleasing” after the age of 7 or so is misguided, therefore the criticism on that score just doesn’t apply.

@ThatDeborahGirl Punished bullies often blame victim for their punishment. They will “punish” their victim back for “ratting them”, so it may easily backfire. Bullying is by definition repeated action and they will not stop their habit after one trouble.

I’m not saying that punishment should not be part of the solution, but it will solve nothing by itself. Look at it this way: punishments alone were never able to stop teenage smoking.

@Havva, go to my first comment. Besides teaching them to stand up for themselves they where taught to stand up for others. They both will go up to kids who are sitting alone and ask if they want to hang with them and their friends. The student services councillor at my daughters school informed me she was one of the most popular kids.. ( so not like me at school lol ) but she also knows what it’s like to be picked on so she will stand up to any bully for anyone( even a teacher who had an accent she stood up in class and told them to ‘ shut the f*#% up and listen ‘ she was then sent to student services for swearing but I was proud of her).

I agree with those that said Just punish the bullies. It is not that hard. All you have to do is make an example out of a few and the other kids will fall in line. Kick them off the football team. Suspend them. Kick them off the cheerleading squad. Basically any kind of school sponsored team they are on they will be kicked off. They will be suspended so their parents will have to deal with them and that makes it more likely the parents will put a stop to the bullying when it becomes their problem.

Press charges with police if there was assault or harassment involved if nothing else works. When the law gets involved I bet the parents will put a stop to it.

The problem is a lot of the time the bullies are the popular kids who have parents who are somebodies who volunteer at the school or the bully is captain of the football team. So they don’t want to punish them. But like I said, make an example out of one or two and the others will stop it.

There are proven programs out there that work to reduce bullying. But they are not as simple as putting up a poster, having an assembly and asking teachers to say some quote every morning. These programs have been replicated and compared to control groups. They also tend to cost money and time to implement.

As I recall (because it has been a couple of years) the best programs involve peer counseling/mentoring. It involves the teachers getting trained, then them training their classes. Student are recruited to do training to be peer mentors. Students are all instructed in what is acceptable and what is not and how to stand up for other students who are being bullied. (Because often, if the kids are not cheering, they don’t know what they can do to help so they just watch and it seems like they condone the actions.) The whole climate of the school needs to change to one of respect, which includes the teachers. Once the climate starts to change, students stand up for bullied students and both the bullies and the bullied get counseling and support though the peer mentors. Once students realize that their peers don’t consider what they are doing appropriate, then the bullying often stops.

This does take time to implement. In the short term, I would get the kids together – by class would be best if they can, later with the whole school, and discuss this. Sit the kids in a circle and encourage them to talk open and honestly. Target a couple of kids who are uncomfortable but not recipients to start. They can be prepped ahead of time. Have them talk about how they feel when they see this going on – how it may make them feel scared, or sad that people who they used to see as nice they now see as being mean – and NOT Cool. Do not let the ringleaders talk until everyone else gets to talk. Encourage the group to brainstorm ways that they can help the targets – how they can stand up for and remind the bullies that what they are doing is not acceptable, not cool, not making them friends. This might help, but really an over all culture change is needed. This might need to be repeated often.

And, when kids report that they are bullied – take them seriously. Give them and the rest of the bystanders skills to stand up and say that what is going on is not right. Kids getting slapped and shoved into rooms being told to stay there should not happen.

Maybe I’m the only one who thinks a buddy bench could backfire. “Go away, loser, and sit on the buddy bench!”

I am unsure how rewarding bullies with leadership roles helps the situation, it’s nice to hear of one testimony on this playworks. I think the playworks idea sounds good as an inspiration to get them on their way if the kids lack the skill of organizing pick-up games by themselves.

J.T. Wentling, I am sorry for your story. I know you’ve overcome all that, but I would imagine the bullies were stars and favored students. It’s tough to beat that.