This page consists of quotes about Bullying.

It's unbearable to think any young person should feel there is no other option but to end their life because of bullying on social networking sites. ~ Claire Lilley
I don't know a single useful lesson that I or anyone else ever learned from getting bullied- it only brought shame and debilitating memories. Getting bullied always leads you to wrong decisions and wrong conclusions. You compensate in all the wrong ways. You wind up looking for someone weaker to bully yourself, you lose confidence and hate your weakness, and you fear and distrust the wrong people, all of which are reasons why bullied kids overwhelmingly wind up as failures in the real world, according to recent studies. You have to have never been bullied to think that it teaches something valuable and necessary and makes you a stronger person. ~ Mark Ames
If there’s one goal of this conference, it’s to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up. ~ Barack Obama
Our boys and girls ought to know that the bully type, the false "tough," has been the first to break down under the actual fire of battle. The quiet, the calm, the determined have made the best soldiers. Why? Obviously the bully is insecure in himself- he blusters to muster his own courage. Children ought to know that. They ought to be taught to retort to the bully, "You're a coward or you wouldn't make such a noise about being brave. The really brave man simply acts brave- he doesn't have to talk about it." ~ Pearl S. Buck

Quotes

Alphabetized by author

A - F

  • Regina Huerter, Director of Juvenile Diversion for the Denver District Attorney's office, compiled a report on Columbine's "toxic culture," as Dylan Klebold's parents later described it. One Jewish student she interviewed told her how jocks threatened to "build an oven and set him on fire," and how, during P.E. basketball, each time someone scored a basket, the bullies would cheer, "that's another Jew in the oven!" The student complained over and over, but, he said, the school administration not only didn't punish the jocks, they "did everything but call me a liar." Another student was physically and verbally abused by a group of jocks so badly that he refused to go back to the school. The father tried contacting the administration, but they didn't return his calls for six weeks, and when they did, they were curt and rude. The father pulled his son from the high school and told Huerter that "he still refuses to enter Columbine property to this day." "All the students with whom I spoke, independent of their status at the school, acknowledged there was bullying," Huerter wrote. Students and parents all complained of Columbine's exceptionally brutal culture, but the administration did nothing about it. Some who worked in the school district told Huerter that they kept mum about the bullying because they were afraid for their jobs. As Brown noted, "The bullies were popular with the administration."
    • Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 185-186
  • Bullying was so deeply ingrained that, as the American Psychology Association Monitor wrote, "Columbine students said teachers and staff did not seem to notice the bullying and aggression; apparently such behaviors were culturally normative." Here again is a perfect, modern example of how what is considered normal is not only tolerated, but is simply not seen, no matter how brutal it is. From this example, it's a little easier to understand how whites accepted- did not even notice- slavery, in spite of its cruelty. Many parents and students said that the reason for Columbine's bully-coddling culture went straight to the top, to principal Frank DeAngelis, himself a jock.
    • Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 186
  • One reason why our society has failed to curb bullying is that we like bullies. Hell, we are bullies. Research has shown that bullies are not the anti-social misfits that adults, in their forced amnesia, want them to be. Rather, bullies are usually the most popular boys, second only on the clique-ranking to those described as friendly, outgoing, and self-confident. The Santana High kids and parents both felt that there was no point in complaining to the administration because they wouldn't have done anything anyway, a reflection of the fact that popular winners are treated better than losers. At Columbine, parents and students both felt that bullies were favored by teachers and administrators, and that complainers were often ignored or blamed. Indeed, losers pay for being losers twice over in our schools, taking both the punishment and the blame.
    • Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 191
  • I don't know a single useful lesson that I or anyone else ever learned from getting bullied- it only brought shame and debilitating memories. Getting bullied always leads you to wrong decisions and wrong conclusions. You compensate in all the wrong ways. You wind up looking for someone weaker to bully yourself, you lose confidence and hate your weakness, and you fear and distrust the wrong people, all of which are reasons why bullied kids overwhelmingly wind up as failures in the real world, according to recent studies. You have to have never been bullied to think that it teaches something valuable and necessary and makes you a stronger person. Dr. Tonja Nansel, who worked on a 1998 World Health Organization survey on Health Behavior in School-Aged Children, showed that both bullies and the bullied develop far greater problems later on in life- bullied kids particularly have difficulties making friends, and suffer from lifelong loneliness.
    • Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 192
  • I know that I learned far more valuable lessons when I was the bully than when I was bullied. The lesson was simple: it felt better to be the one dishing it out. The pangs of remorse after pummeling a scrawny dork wore off pretty quickly; the humiliations of being on the receiving end, however, were replayed over and over and over, for years and years. I cannot imagine what kind of callous moron could possibly see anything in being a victim of bullying. Maybe the idea comes from our cultural propaganda, where the bullied nerd, like Back to the Future's McFly, always fights back in the triumphant climax, becomes a stronger person for it, and goes on to be a successful patron of a nuclear family, while the bully winds up washing his car. Bullying, in our cultural propaganda, is simply a dramatic plot device which the hero overcomes. Rarely, if ever, is it represented as it really works- as something privately eating away at kids, flat and uninteresting, and never overcome... As Dr. Nansel said, "In the past, bullying has simply been dismissed as kids will be kids," but now that we are waking up to its effects, "it should not be accepted as a normal part of growing up."
    • Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 192
  • While bullying (a playground word that seems to cheapen its truly devastating effects) is finally being recognized as wrong in specific settings where rage massacres have taken place, what is still being avoided is bullying on the broader, cultural level. We ignore the bullying of the Al Dunlaps, who abuses his wife, fires tens of thousands of workers and walks away with tens of millions for himself... and not only gets away with it, but becomes adored for his "mean business". Just as bullies are popular in schools. Or the bullying of Reaganomics, where the vulnerable were sacrificed in order to fatten up the rich, an uninterrupted policy that is only getting worse. Or the bullying of the new management style that pushes for increased fear and stress to squeeze "unlimited juice," and that creates a workforce that "never leaves" in spite of it. Not to mention, of course, the bullying of President Bush's foreign policy, which has turned most of the world against America to a degree not seen in our lifetime, yet which has made Bush even more popular at home... that is until the bullied started fighting back.
    • Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 196-197
  • In high school, they don't call it cyber bullying at all. They call it digital drama, they call it life. They don't want to call it bullying because they think it makes them look weak.
  • Jack was made a sergeant, but he shouted at the men so much and bullied them so often, in an effort to convince them of an authority he did not possess, that he was replaced. Or rather, he resigned. "Keep your lousy sergeancy," he said. "I don't want it anyhow."
    • Alvah Bessie, Men in Battle: A Story of Americans in Spain (1939), p. 65
  • Bullying at work is not only about aggressive behavior. The covert nature of workplace bullying behavior can destroy a target’s health, ability to work, emotional well-being, self-worth, and financial condition. This research is one of the first studies on workplace bullying in the United States. Workplace bullies have a serious negative impact upon the organizations for which they work (Namie & Namie, 2003; Prentice, 2005). Once the bullying atmosphere begins to pervade an organization, morale is destroyed and productivity is affected. The workplace often includes distorted personality types that seem to have just one purpose: to find somebody else to attack, to belittle, to criticize, and to destroy (Prentice). Bully behavior, whether committed by men 94 or women, should be further examined due to the long-term costs for both employees and the organizations for which they work. Many leaders and managers either fail to recognize the problem or are themselves the problem. Early studies on bullying focused on the behavior of the bully, the target, or the bully-target pairing (Olweus, 1999). Recent approaches have adopted an ecological perspective that examines the broader context in which bullying can occur and especially the many interrelated systems of the environment, such as the workplace and its leadership (Namie, 2003). This study presents methods of aggression employed by bullies that leaders must recognize and cease.
  • Questions at home and school should be decided in the light of the future. It is a process of toughening, but not the sort of false physical thing that we have called toughening. Our boys and girls ought to know that the bully type, the false "tough," has been the first to break down under the actual fire of battle. The quiet, the calm, the determined have made the best soldiers. Why? Obviously the bully is insecure in himself- he blusters to muster his own courage. Children ought to know that. They ought to be taught to retort to the bully, "You're a coward or you wouldn't make such a noise about being brave. The really brave man simply acts brave- he doesn't have to talk about it."
    • Pearl S. Buck, What America Means to Me (1943), p. 151-152
  • Take The Power Out Of Bullying
    • Motto of the Bystander Revolution, an anti-bullying organization started in 2014. Its name refers to the bystander effect, which Bystander Revolution seeks to counter.
  • Bullying bosses, studies find, differ in significant ways from the Blutos of childhood. In the schoolyard, particularly among elementary school boys, bullies tend to pick on smaller or weaker children, often to assert control in an uncertain social environment in which they feel uncomfortable. But adult bullies in positions of power are already dominant, and they are just as likely to pick on a strong subordinate as a weak one, said Dr. Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute, an advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash. Women, Dr. Namie said, are at least as likely as men to be the aggressors, and they are more likely to be targets. In leadership positions that require the exercise of sheer violent will- on the football field or the battlefield- this approach can be successful: consider Vince Lombardy or George Patton. But in an office or on a factory floor, different rules apply, and bullying usually has more to do with the boss's desires than with the employee's needs.
    • Benedict Carey, New York Times journalist, in the article "Fear in the Workplace: The Bullying Boss", published June 22, 2004.
  • If you don't give power to the words that people throw at you to hurt you, they don't hurt you anymore — and you actually have power over those people. … So, if you can, realize that the things that people say about you — they don't really matter — it's who you are. And the older you get, the more you'll understand that — because it gets better. And people get nicer too.
  • BULLYING. A form of harassment that includes acts of aggression by Service members or DoD civilian employees, with a nexus to military service, with the intent of harming a Service member either physically or psychologically, without a proper military or other governmental purpose. Bullying may involve the singling out of an individual from his or her coworkers, or unit, for ridicule because he or she is considered different or weak. It often involves an imbalance of power between the aggressor and the victim. Bullying can be conducted through the use of electronic devices or communications, and by other means including social media, as well as in person.
    • U.S. Department of Defense Instruction 1020.03: Harassment Prevention and Response in the Armed Forces, released 8 February 2018, Section 3.4, p. 10
a. Bullying is evaluated by a reasonable person standard and includes, but is not limited to the following when performed without a proper military or other governmental purpose:
(1) Physically striking another person in any manner or threatening to do the same;
(2) Intimidating, teasing, or taunting another person;
(3) Oral or written berating of another person with the purpose of belittling or humiliating;
(4) Encouraging another person to engage in illegal, harmful, demeaning or dangerous
acts;
(5) Playing abusive or malicious tricks;
(6) Branding, handcuffing, duct taping, tattooing, shaving, greasing, or painting another person;
(7) Subjecting another person to excessive or abusive use of water;
(8) Forcing another person to consume food, alcohol, drugs, or any other substance;
(9) Degrading or damaging another’s property or reputation; and
(10) Soliciting, coercing, or knowingly permitting another person to solicit or coerce acts of bullying.
b. Bullying does not include properly directed command or organizational activities that serve a proper military or other governmental :purpose, or the requisite training activities required to prepare for such activities :(e.g., command-authorized physical training).
c. Service members may be responsible for an act of bullying even if there was actual or implied consent from the victim and regardless :of the grade or rank, status, or Service of the victim.
d. Bullying is prohibited in all circumstances and environments, including off-duty or “unofficial” unit functions and settings.
  • U.S. Department of Defense Instruction 1020.03: Harassment Prevention and Response in the Armed Forces, released 8 February 2018, Section 3.4, p. 10-11
  • I was a victim of bullying. I think with the cyber bullying, the viciousness, the cruelty, that's what I think is really getting people's attention. It's hard to say that bullying in and of itself is going to lead to a suicide attempt, but if a kid is already having difficulty with family issues, or some mental health issues, bullying could really be the thing that pushes them over.
  • Definitions of bullying at work further emphasize two main features: repeated and enduring aggressive behaviours that are intended to be hostile and/or perceived as hostile by the recipient (Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996; Leymann, 1990b; Zapf et al., 1996). In other words, bullying is normally not about single and isolated events, but rather about behaviours that are repeatedly and persistently directed towards one or more employees. Leymann (1990b, 1996) suggested that to be called 'mobbing' or bullying, such events should occur at least once a week, which characterises bullying as a severe form of social stress. In many cases this criterion is difficult to apply because not all bullying behaviors are strictly episodic in nature. For example, a rumour can circulate that may be harmful or even threaten to destroy the victim's career or reputation. However, it does not have to be repeated every week. In cases we have been made aware of, victims had to work in basement rooms without windows and telephone. Here, bullying consists of a permanent state rather than a series of events. Hence, the main criterion is that the behaviours or their consequences are repeated on a regular as opposed to an occasional basis.
  • Parents who are intimidated by texting and social-networking sites view cyberbullying as a terrifying new form of bullying, but the truth is that cyberbullying is just a continuation of existing adolescent behavior, played out in a new arena. Approximately 20-25 percent of kids have been bullied online, and this is a conservative estimate. Bullies and victims can trade places at the click of a mouse, and things move so fast online that it is difficult to process information rationally before acting. For unfortunate kids who find themselves on the receiving end of massive cyberbullying attacks, the relentless barrage of cruelty can create a sensation of sinking into a black hole of pain.
    • Dr. Dorothy Espelage, in the Introduction for Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear (2012) by Carrie Goldman, p. xiii
  • How exactly does the pain of severe bullying affect the most vulnerable kids? Studies investigating the neuroscience of bullying have found that bullying victims experience anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, difficulty concentrating, headaches, and stomach pain as a result of being bullied. Studies of early social deprivation show that human beings are hardwired to belong, and nowhere is this more evident than in kids jockeying for social position. And the old adage- sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me? Not true. Neuroimaging studies have shown that parts of the cortical brain network are also activated when a person is socially excluded. This goes not just for adults but for children as well. The brain of a child as young as thirteen has been shown to react to pain as if the child were being physically injured. Taunting and bullying hurts, and we have the brain scans to prove it. Even worse, repeatedly being victimized by peers- which is the very nature of bullying, the repetitiveness of it- actually alters brain functioning, which increases the victim's sensitivity to future attacks, even causing the person to perceive an ambiguous situation as threatening. Years after the bullying has ceased, victims are left picking up the wreckage.
    • Dr. Dorothy Espelage, in the Introduction for Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear (2012) by Carrie Goldman, p. xiii
  • Bullying is a learned behavior. Children are not born cruel. Babies in diapers do not assess each other as too fat, too poor, too dark-skinned, to nerdy, too conceited. Born innocent, they start learning stereotypes as soon as they understand language, and we see bullying behavior in children as young as toddlers. Since preschoolers who display marked aggressiveness have a higher likelihood of being bullies in older grades, the earlier intervention begins, the better the results. It is much easier to inculcate kindness and acceptance into a five-year-old who acts like a bully than a fifteen-year-old who acts like a bully.
    • Dr. Dorothy Espelage, in the Introduction for Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear (2012) by Carrie Goldman, p. xiii-xiv
  • The problem than arises of when to define operationally the duration of bullying behaviours. Leymann (1990b, 19960=) suggested exposure for more than six months as an operational definition of bullying at work. Others have used repeated exposure to negative behaviours within a six-month period as the proposed timeframe (Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996). Leymann's strict criterion has been argued to be somewhat arbitrary, as bullying seems to exist on a continuum from occasional exposure to negative behaviours to severe victimisation resulting from frequent and long-lasting exposure to negative behaviours at work (Mattiesen et al., 1989). Yet, the criterion of about six months has been used in many studies in order to differentiate between exposure to social stress at work and victimisation from bullying (e.g. Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996; Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2001; Niedl, 1995; Varita, 1996; Zapf et al. 1996). The reason for this criterion for Leymann (1993, 1996) was to argue that mobbing leads to severe psychiatric and psychosomatic impairment, stress effects which would not be expected to occur as a result of the normal occupational stressors such as time-pressure, role-conflicts or everyday social stressors. Hence, the period of 6 months was chosen by Leymann because it is frequently used in the assessment of various psychiatric disorders.
    • Ibid, p. 8
  • The duration of the bullying seems to be closely related to the frequency of bullying, with those bullied regularly reporting a longer duration of their experience than those bullied less frequently (Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996). This seems to be in line with a model of bullying highlighting the importance of conflict-escalation, with the conflict becoming more intense and more personalised over time (Zapf and Gross, 2001).
    The negative and unwanted nature of the behaviour involves is essential to the concept of bullying. Victims are exposed to persistent insults or offensive remarks, persistent criticism, personal or, even in some few cases, physical abuse (Einarsen, 200b). Others experience social exclusion and isolation; that is they are given the 'silent treatment' or 'sent to Coventry' (Williams, 1997). These behaviours are 'used with the aim or at least the effect of persistently humiliating, intimidating, frightening or punishing the victim' (Einarsen, 2000b, p. 8).
    • Ibid, p. 8-9
  • Based on both empirical and theoretical evidence, Zapf (1999a) categorised five main types of bullying behaviour:

    1 work-related bullying which may include changing the victim's work tasks in some negative way or making them difficult to perform;
    2 social isolation by not communicating with somebody or excluding someone from social events;
    3 personal attacks or attacks on someone's private life by ridicule or insulting remarks or the like;
    4 verbal threats in which somebody is criticised, yelled at or humiliated in public;and
    5 spreading rumors.
    • Ibid, p.9
  • Bullies are typically attempting to promote or assert an identity rather than defend one. Their behavior is typically predatory rather than dispute related. Bullies prey on vulnerable targets, usually in the presence of third parties, in order to show how tough they are (see Olweus, 1978). For the bully, dominating the victim is an accomplishment, a way of demonstrating power to himself and others.
    In case of jealousy, a person may intentionally harm another person who has not attacked or wronged them in any way. Both justice and self-image concerns can produce an aggressive response when someone is jealous. When people think that someone has received an unfair share of some reward, they may attempt to restore equity by harming the person, even when that person is not held responsible for the injustice. We have referred to this behavior as "redistributive justice" (to distinguish it from "retributive justice"). Thus, an employee may blame the supervisor who gives a raise to someone else but attempt to produce unfavorable outcomes for the coworker who received a raise. Jealous people may also attempt to harm the object of jealousy for purposes of downward comparison (Wills, 1981). They may engage in aggressive behavior that lowers the standing of the target on some dimension, thereby providing a favorable comparison for the actor. They put themselves "up" by putting others "down". Wills (1981) suggested that downward comparison was an alternative explanation for the displacement effects obtained in experiments testing frustration-aggression theory. He noted that investigations of displaced aggression, scapegoating, and hostility generalization all involve some challenge to the participants' identities.
    • Ibid, pp. 20-21

G - L

  • Why is it that our fear, suspicion, and hatred of others different from us have overpowered our good sense and moral commitments to civility, goodwill, justice, and tolerance? When we think of Columbine we now know that these kids were bullied. School violence is on the rise and we as educators must consider the way students treat others who are different.
    • Jeffrey Glanz, Teaching 101: Classroom Strategies for the Beginning Teacher (2004), p. 50
  • Some bullies are put into leadership positions because they appear to be smart, ambitious, results-oriented and "take-charge." All of which may be true (as in Brenda’s case), but in addition to those more positive characteristics, most bullies lack empathy. They seem immune to the suffering of others.
  • Since the tragedy, much has been written about the school culture at Columbine High School, and Dylan's place in it. Regina Huerter, director of Juvenile Diversion for the Denver district attorney's office, compiled a report in 2000, and Ralph W. Larkin independentley confirmed many of her findings in his exhaustively researched 2007 book, Comprehending Columbine. Both researchers found Columbine High School was academically excellent and deeply conservative; that much we knew. But they also describe a school with a pervasive culture of bullying- in particular, a group of athletes who harassed, humiliated, and physically assaulted kids at the bottom of the social ladder. Larkin also points to proselytizing and intimidation by evangelical Christian students, a self-appointed moral elite who perceived the kids who dressed differently as evil and targeted them.
    • Susan Klebold, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (2017), p. 187
  • This research lines up with many anecdotal stories we heard after the tragedy from kids who suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their classmates at the school. One story in particular stands out. When Tom went to the sheriff's department in the fall of 1999 to retrieve Dylan's car from the impound lot, a county employee offered his condolences and told him how his own son's hair had been set on fire by some other students while he was attending Columbine High School. The boy, who sustained fairly serious burns to his scalp, refused to allow his father to go to the administration because he was afraid it would make the situation worse. Shaking with anger as he spoke, though the incident was no longer recent, the outraged dad told Tom he had wanted to take the school apart "brick by brick."
    • Susan Klebold, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (2017), p. 187
  • About five years after the massacre, I spoke with a Columbine High School counselor. He told me that, after an earlier, publicized bullying incident, the high school had implemented closer supervision of the student body, including teachers in the hallways between classes, and in the cafeteria at lunch. But we agreed it's impossible to control what two thousand students are doing on a campus- or to know what those kids are doing to one another in the Dairy Queen parking lot. Despite the administration's claim that steps were taken to stem conflict among students, their efforts fell short. For many people, Columbine High School was a hostile and frightening place even if you were one of the most popular kids, and Dylan and his friends were not. One of our neighbors told us her grown son's reaction to the tragedy, a refrain we heard many times: "I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner."
    • Susan Klebold, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (2017), p. 187-188
  • I personally fall somewhere in the middle. Bullying, however severe, is not an excuse for physical retaliation or violence, much less mass murder. But I do believe Dylan was bullied, and that along with many other factors, and perhaps in combination with them, bullying probably did play some role in what he did.
    • Susan Klebold, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (2017), p. 188
  • Dylan's struggles may have been hidden from us, but they were not uncommon ones. A 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that 20 percent of high school students nationwide reported they had been bullied on school property in the thirty days before the survey; an even higher percentage reported they'd been bullied on social media. Anti-bullying advocates suggest the number may be closer to 30 percent. A tremendous amount of research has been done on the effects of peer harassment, and there is unquestionably a correlation between bullying and brain health disorders that stretches all the way into adulthood. A Duke University study found that, compared with kids who weren't bullied, those who were had four times the prevalence of agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and panic disorder as adults. The bullies themselves had four times the risk of developing antisocial personality disorder. There is also a strong association between bullying and depression and suicide. Both being a victim and bullying others is related to high risks of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Researchers at Yale found that victims of bullying were two to nine times more likely to report suicidal thoughts than other children.
    • Susan Klebold, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (2017), p. 190-191
  • The connection between bullying and violence toward others is more complicated, although again there's a correlation. Bullied kids often become bullies themselves, which appears to be what happened with Dylan and Eric. Larkin cites a student who claims they terrorized her brother, a student with special needs, so badly he was afraid to come to school. Researchers call students who both bully and suffer bullying "bully-victims," and find that these bully-victims are at the greatest psychological risk. "Their numbers, compared to those never involved in bullying, tell the story: 14 times the risk of panic disorder, 5 times the risk of depressive disorders, and 10 times the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior.
    • Susan Klebold, A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (2017), p. 191
  • It's unbearable to think any young person should feel there is no other option but to end their life because of bullying on social networking sites.

M - R

  • Shame is a powerful driver not to tell someone something, so telling a parent that you have sent a naked picture of yourself... it's no wonder they don't tell. Sexual shame is a double whammy.
  • The person hurt most by bullying is the bully himself. Most bullies have a downwardly spiraling course through life. Bullies... are fare more likely than nonaggressive kids to commit crimes, batter their wives, abuse their children- and produce another generation of bullies.
    • Dr. Hara Marano, as quoted by Kathleen Winkler in Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005), p. 42
  • I talked to a lot of kids that get bullied, they brought it on themselves.
    • John Marks, school administrator at Westside High School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Originally among statements he made to Harvard researchers working on a federally-funded study of the Westside High School Massacre of March 24, 1998, this remark was quoted by Mark Ames in Ames' book Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 183
  • For the record if someone did that to me I'd hitch a ride to the International Space Station straight away; of coarse who am I kidding, they would never let me in, I've got spiders for hands! Internet is mean!
  • If there’s one goal of this conference, it’s to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.
  • LITTLETON, CO— On April 20, when two students at Columbine High School opened fire in a brutal shooting spree that left 12 classmates and a teacher dead, many feared that this affluent suburban school would never be the same. But now, more than four months after a tragedy that shook the nation to its core and marked the most notorious incident of school violence in U.S. history, the atmosphere is optimistic. Slowly but surely, life at Columbine is returning to normal. Thanks to stern new security measures, a militarized school environment and a massive public-relations effort designed to obscure all memory of the murderous event, members of Columbine's popular crowd are once again safe to reassert their social dominance and resume their proud, longstanding tradition of excluding those who do not fit in.
  • As the school year begins under the watchful eye of 24-hour electronic monitoring and police protection, a sense of normalcy has returned to Columbine. Just like at any other school, the computer geeks are mocked, the economically disadvantaged kids are barely acknowledged, and the chess-club, yearbook and debate-team members are universally reviled. While these traditions are nothing new, from now on they will be much easier to preserve, thanks to the high-tech, draconian security measures that now dominate Columbine life.
  • I believe this is the new claim that employers will deal with. This will replace sexual harassment. People who oppose it say these laws will force people to be polite at work. But you can no longer go to work and act like a beast and get away with it.
  • Bullying is a mean behavior. It is a way to make fun of other people. Some bullies pick on kids or say bad things about them. They also keep other kids from feeling like they are part of the group. Usually, bullying is not a one-time thing. Instead, bullies tease their victims over and over.
    • Lucia Raatma, Bullying (2013), p. 7
  • Some bullies spread lies about other kids. They tell mean stories that embarrass kids. Bullies can make their victims feel awful. Bullying can make kids feel like they don't fit in at school. Bullies might say things like, "You can't play with us." Or they might say, "Don't sit at our table." This is how kids make bullies feel as though they are not liked. Kids who are bullied may feel like they are not good enough to be part of the group. But all kids deserve respect.
    • Lucia Raatma, Bullying (2013), p. 11-13
  • Bullying can happen just about anywhere... Bullies can taunt kids in the cafeteria or on the bus. Usually, they choose places where adults are watching too many kids at once. Or they find places where there are no adults at all.
    • Lucia Raatma, Bullying (2013), p. 15
  • If you see someone being bullied, try to help. Tell the person being bullied to come sit at your table. Offer to be her partner for a school project. With a group of friends, tell the bully to leave the victim alone. Sometimes a bully will be surprised if a group stands up to him.
    • Lucia Raatma, Bullying (2013), p. 19
  • With nearly a million children educated in our schools, we not only must demonstrate a profound commitment to stamp out such stereotyping and bullying, but we must also take action. We are therefore developing a programme for use in our schools, taking the best advice we can find anywhere, that specifically targets such bullying... I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

S - Z

  • Adult bullying at work is a shocking, frightening, and at times shattering experience, both for those targeted and for onlookers. Workplace bullying, mobbing, and emotional abuse essentially synonymous phenomena*are persistent, verbal, and nonverbal aggression at work that include personal attacks, social ostracism, and a multitude of other painful messages and hostile interactions. Because this phenomenon is perpetrated by and through communication, and because workers’ principal responses are communicative in nature, it is vital that communication scholars join the academic dialogue about this damaging feature of worklife. The harm to workers runs the gamut of human misery including ‘‘anxiety, depression, burnout, frustration, helplessness, ... difficulty concentrating, alcohol abuse (Richman, Flaherty, & Rospenda, 1996), and posttraumatic stress disorder (Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996; Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002). Witnessing co-workers experience increased fear, emotional exhaustion, hypervigilance, stress, and intentions to leave (Jennifer, Cowie, & Anaiadou, 2003; Vartia, 2001, 2003). Bullying also hinders group communication, cohesion, and performance by creating hostile environments marked by apprehension, distrust, anger, and suspicion (Frost, 2003; Lockhart, 1997; Vartia, 2003). What makes this communicative phenomenon especially grave is its elevated prevalence in US workplaces. From 28% to 36% of US workers report persistent abuse at work (Keashly & Neuman, 2005; Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2005; Neuman, 2004), and nearly 25% of US companies report some degree of bullying (Blosser, 2004). Furthermore, over 80% of workers say they have witnessed bullying sometime during their work histories (Keashly & Neuman, 2005; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2003a; Namie, 2003b). Given its prevalence and negative consequences, bullying warrants the attention of communication scholars, particularly those studying power and oppression.
  • On the other hand, witnesses were also deeply disturbed by their experiences. Similar to target-witnesses, they spoke of how the workplace experience took over their entire lives, they worried about it at and away from work, they talked about it continually to family and friends, they spent large segments of work time speaking with others or figuring out how to deal with or avoid being abused. Witnesses and targets reported that their experiences and failure of organizational authorities to stop abuse stripped away their beliefs that good prevails over evil.
    • Ibid, p. 421
  • Resistance to abuse at work is a complex, dynamic process in which workers fight to have a voice and are often punished for their efforts. If and when organizational authorities finally intervene, many have already left the organization or suffered years of abuse. The human cost is staggering and workers’ stories heartbreaking. Neither is resistance straightforward; worker dissent is easily reframed as deviant behavior by those for whom the resistance is threatening. Nonetheless, workers faced with bullying at work say they have a moral imperative to act against the injustice and in some cases actually alter their situations. Furthermore, workers often collectively organize against abusers, even in the absence of formal unions. Organizations would be well-informed to heed these voices. Resistance and the emotional communication that springs from it are warning signs that "act as signaling devices when expected appropriate norms of communication are violated" (Waldron, 2000, p.72). These should not be ignored. Organizational authorities must learn to "read the traces" of resistance to bullying, diagnose the problem early, and construct effective interventions.
    • Ibid, p. 429
  • More than 90% of adults experience workplace bullying—that is, psychological and emotional abuse—at some time during the span of their work careers (Hornstein, 1996). The supervisors who inflict psychological abuse on subordinates represent one of the most frequent and serious problems confronting employees in today’s workforce (Yamada, 2000). Although the television news is quick to report the rare but sensational incidents of disgruntled employees returning to their former workplaces seeking revenge (e.g., “Office Rampage,” 1999), rarely do we see stories of employee humiliation and psychological violence perpetrated by more powerful organizational members. Research indicates a link between workplace abuse and workplace violence as the aggressor becomes increasingly more threatening to targeted employees (Namie & Namie, 2000). In addition to increased threats of violence from abusers (Leymann, 1990), employees who feel unfairly treated may express their anger and outrage in subtle acts of retaliation against their employers, including work slowdown or covertly sabotaging the abuser (Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). As reported in a government study, “The cost to employers is untold hours and dollars in lost employee work time, increased health care costs, high turnover rates, and low productivity” (Bureau of National Affairs [BNA], 1990, p. 2). Employee emotional abuse (EEA) is a repetitive, targeted, and destructive form of communication directed by more powerful members at work at those less powerful.
  • For the purposes of this article, EEA is defined as targeted, repetitive workplace communication that is unwelcome and unsolicited, violates standards of appropriate conduct, results in emotional harm, and occurs in relationships of unequal power (Keashly, 2001). EEA has also been labeled workplace mistreatment (Price Spatlen, 1995), workplace aggression (Baron & Neuman, 1998), workplace harassment (Bjorkqvist et al., 1994), verbal abuse (Cox et al., 1991), psychological abuse (Sheenan et al., 1990), and chological violence (Institute for Workplace Trauma and Bullying, 2002).
    • Ibid, pp. 474-5
  • Emotional abusers appear to be particularly skilled at appearing to provide constructive feedback because the organization formally requires it. The extremes to which managers go to build a verbal and written case against the target suggest that this is done to “make . . . action appear justifiable and reasonable to all parties” (Fairhurst et al., 1986, p. 569). They are inclined to systematically distort these communicative processes if they want to get rid of an employee (author’s experience), and because the more powerful member creates the documenting language, they author the formal record of “what occurred.” Rather than improve performance, this form of chronic criticism more often unnerves targets (Lockhart, 1997) and results in further poor performance that substantiates the abuser’s initial claims of incompetence (Wyatt & Hare, 1997).
    • Ibid, p. 482
  • Last year, when I was in sixth grade, our class watched a video about a boy who was bullied because of his disabilities. A girl at his school went on the internet and told everyone she wanted to have a relationship with him. Once she put it out there, she couldn't take it back. When the boy found out it was just a joke, he wrote on the Web, "People like you make me want to kill myself." And then he did; he hanged himself.
    • Mariah, student quoted in Bullying and Me: Schoolyard Stories (2010) by Ouisie Shapiro, p. 11-12
  • Kids are sneaky about bullying. They don't want to get caught, so they make sure to do it when there are no teachers around.
    • Richard, student quoted in Bullying and Me: Schoolyard Stories (2010) by Ouisie Shapiro, p. 13
  • Don't stand by and do nothing. Sometimes kids who are being bullied need to borrow strength from someone else. If you see someone getting picked on, try to take him or her away from the bully. If you don't feel safe doing this, report the incident to an adult.
    • Ouisie Shapiro, Bullying and Me: Schoolyard Stories (2010), p. 29
  • Junior high was actually sort of hard because I got dumped by this group of popular girls. They didn't think I was cool or pretty enough, so they stopped talking to me. The kids at school thought it was weird that I liked country music.
  • Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems. In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:
An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.
Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.
  • There are three types of bullying:
Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:
Teasing
Name-calling
Inappropriate sexual comments
Taunting
Threatening to cause harm
Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
Leaving someone out on purpose
Telling other children not to be friends with someone
Spreading rumors about someone
Embarrassing someone in public
Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:
Hitting/kicking/pinching
Spitting
Tripping/pushing
Taking or breaking someone’s things
Making mean or rude hand gestures
  • Bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying happens in the school building, a significant percentage also happens in places like on the playground or the bus. It can also happen travelling to or from school, in the youth’s neighborhood, or on the Internet.
  • Generally, children who are bullied have one or more of the following risk factors:
Are perceived as different from their peers, such as being overweight or underweight, wearing glasses or different clothing, being new to a school, or being unable to afford what kids consider “cool”
Are perceived as weak or unable to defend themselves
Are depressed, anxious, or have low self esteem
Are less popular than others and have few friends
Do not get along well with others, seen as annoying or provoking, or antagonize others for attention
However, even if a child has these risk factors, it doesn’t mean that they will be bullied.
  • There are two types of kids who are more likely to bully others:
Some are well-connected to their peers, have social power, are overly concerned about their popularity, and like to dominate or be in charge of others.
Others are more isolated from their peers and may be depressed or anxious, have low self esteem, be less involved in school, be easily pressured by peers, or not identify with the emotions or feelings of others.
Children who have these factors are also more likely to bully others;
Are aggressive or easily frustrated
Have less parental involvement or having issues at home
Think badly of others
Have difficulty following rules
View violence in a positive way
Have friends who bully others
Remember, those who bully others do not need to be stronger or bigger than those they bully. The power imbalance can come from a number of sources—popularity, strength, cognitive ability—and children who bully may have more than one of these characteristics.
  • Statistics from the 2012 Indicators of School Crime and Safety show that an adult was notified in less than half (40%) of bullying incidents. Kids don’t tell adults for many reasons:
Bullying can make a child feel helpless. Kids may want to handle it on their own to feel in control again. They may fear being seen as weak or a tattletale.
Kids may fear backlash from the kid who bullied them.
Bullying can be a humiliating experience. Kids may not want adults to know what is being said about them, whether true or false. They may also fear that adults will judge them or punish them for being weak.
Kids who are bullied may already feel socially isolated. They may feel like no one cares or could understand.
Kids may fear being rejected by their peers. Friends can help protect kids from bullying, and kids can fear losing this support.
  • Kids who are bullied can experience negative physical, school, and mental health issues. Kids who are bullied are more likely to experience:
Depression and anxiety, increased feelings of sadness and loneliness, changes in sleep and eating patterns, and loss of interest in activities they used to enjoy. These issues may persist into adulthood.
Health complaints
Decreased academic achievement—GPA and standardized test scores—and school participation. They are more likely to miss, skip, or drop out of school.
A very small number of bullied children might retaliate through extremely violent measures. In 12 of 15 school shooting cases in the 1990s, the shooters had a history of being bullied.
  • Although considerable research has linked workplace bullying with psychosocial and physical costs, the stories and conceptualizations of mistreatment by those targeted are largely untold. This study uses metaphor analysis to articulate and explore the emotional pain of workplace bullying and, in doing so, helps to translate its devastation and encourage change. Based on qualitative data gathered from focus groups, narrative interviews, and target drawings, the analysis describes how bullying can feel like a battle, water torture, nightmare, or noxious substance. Abused workers frame bullies as narcissistic dictators, two-faced actors, and devil figures. Employees targeted with workplace bullying liken themselves to vulnerable children, slaves, prisoners, animals, and heartbroken lovers. These metaphors highlight and delimit possibilities for agency and action. Furthermore, they may serve as diagnostic cues, providing shorthand necessary for early intervention.
  • Somebody who is bullied and has a lot of coping skills, support in their family and in other friends, is probably more resilient than somebody who doesn’t perceive others as being supportive or has low self-esteem, identity issues, or depressed mood.
  • Once you have power you have everything.
    • High school boy, former bully, quoted in Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005) by Kathleen Winkler, p. 21
  • It's mostly the popular people that can get away with a lot of stuff because everyone else wants to be friends with whoever is popular.
    • Middle school boy, quoted in Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005) by Kathleen Winkler, p. 21
  • Dr. Dan Olweus, a social science researcher in Norway who did much of the original research on bullying, found that by the time bullied children become adults, some "normalization" takes place. Victims are freer to choose or create their own social life. At the same time, he said, they are still at risk for depression and negative feelings about themselves. Another researcher found that adults who had been victims of bullying in childhood reported higher levels of loneliness than did nonvictims. In addition, that study showed that adult men who never married and were shy with women often had a history of being bullied in childhood. That suggests the social withdrawal often seen in victims may continue in later life. Of course, it is not always that way. Many children, perhaps most of them, who are bullied grow up to be normal, happy people. But for some, the fear and self-hatred caused by the bullies never leave.
    • Kathleen Winkler, Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005), p. 41
  • For a television special on bullying, children on a playground were videotaped. When the producers watched the tape, they saw a bullying incident about every eight minutes. When they asked teachers how often they stepped in to stop bullying, the teachers said, "All the time." Yet the tape showed them stepping in just 5 percent of the incidents. One teacher admitted, "We rarely see it, we don't intervene and we don't hear it. But kids hear it, see it and are a part of it."
    • Kathleen Winkler, Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005), p. 66
  • Just telling bullies to stop or telling victims to ignore them or fight back are not solutions to a school's bullying problem, experts say. "To prevent bullying, educators need to do nothing less than change the school culture," says researcher J. David Hawkins, "the school environment in which learning takes place."
    • Kathleen Winkler, Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005), p. 66
  • Society is just beginning to understand the effects of bullying and to learn what to do about it. Every child in elementary, middle, or high school needs to ask, "Am I part of the problem or part of the solution?" When more of us are part of the solution than part of the problem, the issue of bullying will no longer devastate as many lives and cause so much pain.
    • Kathleen Winkler, Bullying: How To Deal With Taunting, Teasing and Tormenting (2005), p. 87

Bullyproof Your Child For Life

Quotes from Bullyproof Your Child For Life: Protect Your Child From Teasing, Taunting, and Bullying For Good (2007) by Dr. Joel Haber
  • When I was growing up, bullying was assumed to be a rite of passage. If you got beat up on the playground, that was supposed to toughen you up and show you how to "be a man." If kids called you names, that was "just teasing," and you were told to ignore it and it would stop. And almost no one talked about bullying among girls. The good news is that society is taking bullying a lot more seriously these days. The bad news is that it took tragedies like school shootings to make us wake up. Bullying is abuse, and it carries serious short-term and long-term consequences for all involved: the bullies, the targets, and the observers. Nearly everyone can remember that white-hot feeling when a bully said something meant to humiliate, or the time you tried to will yourself torment you in the locker room, even twenty or thirty years after it happened. Nearly everyone can remember the poor kid who was at the bottom of the social totem pole at school, and any of us can remember wishing to help, but keeping our mouths shut out of fear of being the next target of looking "uncool."
    • p. 10
  • Note that bullies are not typically jealous of the kids they pick on, and they don't usually have low self-esteem. That's another myth- one that experts believed for decades until psychological tests showed that bullies typically had self-esteem to spare. When I was growing up, the stereotype of the bully was an overweight, overaggressive, not very intelligent boy who beat up on others to make himself feel better by proving his physical strength. There are still some of this type of bully out there, sure, but there's a much more dangerous bully type now. Today's bullies are often popular, smart, charming to adults, and have many friends, even if their friendships are based on fear. They maintain their social status by making others objects of scorn and ridicule. To most people, they look like leaders. What bullies may not have is empathy, and that may be the most critical element differentiating them from kids with true leadership skills.
    • p. 15
  • The thing that makes it so hard to deal with these types of bullies is that they're often hard to recognize, and hard for bystanders to stand up to. People like them. Teachers are amused by them. Coaches value them. Their social skills enable them to sweet-talk and appear innocent to adults, and their peers are terrified of standing up to them when they witness bullying behaviors because they could easily become the next targets. Whether they admit it or not, nearly all kids want to be popular. They want to have friends on the highest rung of the social ladder. They'll rarely contradict or confront a popular kid who's doing something wrong because that would make them "uncool" and likely to lose social status themselves. Because of this, the popular bullies learn that they can get away with anything, and their empathy declines. They feel more and more powerful, and feel contempt for the less powerful kids. They're likely to repeat this pattern throughout life in their workplaces, towns, and families- teaching their kids how to climb the social ladder so they can annihilate the "worthless" kids below them, too. That is part of the reason we have to deal with these issues early when they occur, because the longer kids get away with bullying, the less their empathy kicks in to stop these situations.
    • p. 15-16
  • By now, most of us realize that the adage "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me" is a load of bull. The truth is that broken bones heal. Broken hearts are much harder to mend, and broken spirits can be lifetime handicaps. And parents, no matter how many times you tell your kids, "You're smart and attractive," if all they hear from their peers is "You're stupid and ugly," the latter is what they'll internalize. They don't believe you. You're biased- and besides, you're "old"! You're not going to negate the effects of verbal bullying just by assuring your child that the kids' words aren't true.
    • p. 23
  • Bullying is meant to humiliate, and it does its job quite well. Often bullied kids are so embarrassed that they don't even want to tell their parents.
    • p. 37
  • Sensitive kids expect other kids to be sensitive. When they're not, often the sensitive kid wants to tell the bully how she feels, particularly when they're young and the bullying is verbal. ("You hurt my feelings." "I don't like it when you say that!" "Stop, you're making me upset.") Some parents encourage this, too, believing that if the bully just understood the words or behaviors were hurtful, they'd stop. This is wishful thinking, and works only when you're not dealing with a true bully. True bullies don't have empathy--at least not for your child. They do not care that they've hurt your child's feelings...in fact, that's exactly what they want. So if your child expresses that his feelings are hurt, it's just as good as your child saying, "Way to go! You're accomplishing your goal. Please, keep it up! I might fall apart any second! Get popcorn!"
    • p. 67
  • It's extremely hard for good people to believe that anyone could be so cruel at heart, especially children. We want to believe just talking to them and helping them understand the effects of their behavior can turn them all around. Some of them can and will learn empathy, sure. Others never will.
    • p. 67
It's a stereotype that athletes are are often the school bullies. Of course, not all (or even most) bullies are athletes, but the stereotype exists for a reason. Athletes are generally stronger than the other kids- tougher, more agile, more intimidating. That in itself gives them an advantage in the bullying arena, but it goes further than that.
Athletes are taught to be aggressive, and told that the more aggressive they are, the more likely they are to win.
Athletes often get preferential treatment at school: they may have an easier time cutting class, or get passing grades when they really deserved to fail.
Adults in authority praise athletes, often reinforcing their place at the top of the pecking order.
Recruiters may treat star athletes like celebrities, spoiling them with gifts and bribes.
It's important to discuss leadership responsibilities with the better athletes. They need to understand that the qualities they have that make them leaders on the sports field are gifts to be used to help people, not to stomp on "weaker" kids.
  • p. 179-180
  • However, for some children, camp can be a nightmare if they experience bullying and they don't feel safe when they are away from home. Bullying thrives in unstructured atmospheres where supervision may feel looser, and camps can provide the perfect atmosphere for bullying to flourish, unfortunately. Kids generally have a lot more free time and possibilities to mingle with each other in camp, as opposed to school. In school, bullying happens about four times more often on the playground versus in the classroom, and camp can be like one giant playground. For example, bullying in camp occurs when supervision is lean: on the way to activities, during shower time, during free play, and when kids are in their cabins and counselors are not readily visible.
    • p. 193
  • How many times do we hear children speak about their summer being "great" because of their mentors, the counselors? What makes a great summer are the relationships the kids make. Besides friends, they want to feel accepted, loved, cared for, and connected to their staff. From my own work in the bullying arena, one can see where there's an obvious overriding problem: Most of the staff are teenagers and young adults. The average age of a counselor is nineteen to twenty-two, but in many camps, high school students are hired for theses jobs, even if it is in the counselor-in-training format. The potential problem that brings is that these counselors are not very far removed from the prime bullying years in their own lives. They don't necessarily yet have any insight about how to handle bullies, and they're still worried about their own popularity and social standing.
    • p. 193-194
  • Kids tend to know the social hierarchy in any group situation, whether that's at school, camp, or elsewhere. They figure out pretty quickly who's at the top of the ladder, who's in the middle, and who's on the bottom. So do counselors, even if they don't know it themselves, and counselors tend to align themselves with the ids at the top of the ladder. This is a normal human trait, wanting to connect with popularity. However, for a counselor, this issue has severe consequences, especially if it involves a child who is not a popular kid.
    • p. 194
  • If they hear hurtful talk, counselors should jump in and defend the target. If a group of girls make fun of a camper's clothing or hair, the counselor needs to say something like, "I think Eileen's hair is beautiful." If they try to keep a kid out of an activity, the counselor needs to step in and make sure the kid is included and not picked on. Counselors need to be vigilant about jumping in when they hear gossip, or any negative talk about other campers or even other counselors. When counselors jump into camp situations and say, "Hey, what's going on here?" or "Hey, what's up with that?" or "We don't talk about anyone behind their back" or "How would you feel if someone was saying that about you right now behind your back?" counselors see that their behavior has an impact. This kind of training helps counselors define who they are as models and gives them the power to stop bullying. More important, it shows campers who's in charge and what they can get away with.
    • p. 199
It gets better project
Stopbullying.gov
Dealing with Bullies
Ronan's Escape
Dr. Joel Haber
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