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Mentors Can Lead Bullies to Positive Behaviors

A bully is going to hate it when you tell him this, but he’s going with you to the local animal shelter to help feed dogs.  Bullies never change if their reality doesn’t change, so mentors can lead bullies to positive behaviors.

It’s not a good idea to spend a lot of time rewarding bullies with gifts. Although the attention is positive, someone needs to start showing that kid the positive value of being kind.  Mentors are typically very active in their communities, and they do what they do because they want to see positive change for the disadvantaged.  It would be a great idea to bring that bully along to the next humanitarian activity that you take on.

Bullies need to feel valued as much as anyone.  Part of the power trip is about self-importance and feeling valued.  It’s one thing to tell the kid that no one values those kinds of behaviors, it’s another thing for a mentor to lead the bully to positive behavior such as volunteering, so that he experiences valued behavior first hand.

No one ever tells a bully, “thank you.”  Bullies don’t look for gratitude.  Being appreciated is a much better feeling than being feared, but how many bullies really know that?  Most have never been given the opportunity to try.   Some great places to encourage positive behaviors are animal shelters, food banks, Habitat for Humanity builds, local marathons and walk-a-thons, park clean-up days, and soup kitchens.  There are almost always volunteer appreciation dinners and ceremonies connected to these different kinds of activities.  To be publicly recognized for good deeds can be a huge turning point for a bully.  He will get public recognition as his name is called or his picture is taken.  He’ll get some kind of certificate of appreciation, and he will be very motivated to come back and do it all over again in order to soak up his new found power as a hero.

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Mentoring a Bully

Bullies need support too.  Often times their only adult contact is negative.  Even in the school system, they’re always being scolded or sent to suspension.  They don’t view adults as any sort of allies.  Mentoring programs are great for all kinds of at risk kids.  Bullies fall into the at risk category.  They’re at risk of criminal charges.  Mentoring a bully could be the best way to start to change this destructive behavior.

All kids love positive attention.  Even mean ones.  If that bully comes from a violent household, it is probably the only way he knows how to move through the world.  He just doesn’t know how to negotiate relationships any other way.  He probably has no real friends.  Therefore any child interaction will have to come through negative choices and meanness.  Children need someone to look up to and confide in.  A mentor can be that someone.

Most mentors would probably prefer not to have to deal with a so called losing battle, and it could be a losing a battle, indeed.  But to not try at all is a disservice to the victims of the bully, the bully and society as a whole.  As the mentor comes to know the kid, other issues will reveal themselves.  Bullies rarely do well in school.  They are probably emotionally immature, and once the’re in trouble, they may act much younger than they really are. Needless to say, there’s a lot going on for this kind of kid.

As the bully’s mentor develops a comfortable relationship, some gentle guidance on bad behavior can be that little thing that starts to change the way a bully relates to others.  It will take persistence and constant reminders.  It may take some hard facts about criminal charges and jail time.  It may ultimately be a hopeless cause, but we have to try with every kid, regardless of his behavior.

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Bullies Go to Jail

Bullying is serious business these days.  Once upon a time, a parent might scold a bully for hurting his child. He might even give the bully a little taste of his own medicine.  Today, that parent is considered a bully, and he could find himself in jail.  A better approach is to remind the bully that he is not immune from legal action, no matter how old he is.  He needs to understand that bullies go to jail.

School yard shoving and intimidation is a serious subject due to all the publicized deaths because of it.  As a society, we’re not tolerating this much anymore.  Once upon a time, a juvenile in jail was put there because he knowingly committed an assault.  Bullies know what their doing.  Today, they go to jail, too.

Often schools start the punishment process by removing the bully to in school suspension.  From there it might escalate to an alternative campus for troublemakers.  However, at some point, if the behavior doesn’t stop, the school may find an angry parent filing charges against that bully.  Schools need to impress upon these troublemakers that bullies go to jail.  They need to make sure this kid knows it won’t be the school pressing the charges, but an angry parent.

Bullies rarely think about the consequences of their actions.  They just like the way they feel while they’re being abusive to others.  They never think that a shove could result in a child hitting his head on the pavement.  They never think that accident could kill the child and make the bully a murderer.  They don’t equate injuries with breaking the law.

A good school anti-bullying program should assign mock criminal charges to each incident of bullying.  It could be verbal assault, battery, physical assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and if the kid is rude to the teacher, call it resisting arrest.  They’ll start to get the idea about their behavior.

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The Unintentional Bully

Some kids do not mean to hurt others.  They may simply be a joker who thinks they’re being funny or cool.  However, these witty children can very quickly become an unintentional bully if they aren’t aware of what some words really mean or how they make certain children feel.

Probably one of the oldest “insults” that kids have unintentionally made is to tell another child that, “you’re so gay.”  The offending child probably doesn’t mean any harm.  In fact, that kid might not even know a gay person.  Therefore, he probably has no concept of what kind of bullying, verbal abuse and intimidation such a child would be going through.  If a homosexual child happens to hear this so called insult, he may take great offense and emotional pain from it.  It’s best to tell children not to use that phrase.  It’s rude and reflects poorly on the unintentional bully.  It’s also a good opportunity to teach children about homosexuality in a positive and accepting manner.

The N-word is thrown around like it means nothing at all.  It’s typically heard in rap music or among blacks who are joking with one another.  A white child should not think it’s O.K. for him to use it, too.  It will never be O.K. for whites to use that word.  This may seem strange for a child who never experienced the Civil Rights Movement, but those scars run very deep in the black community, and many blacks still suffer the results of racism in their everyday life.  The N-word is truly inappropriate for anyone, including blacks, to use.  It is never anything but a mean insult.

Making fun of another’s appearance is always wrong and will throw a perfectly good child into the unintentional bully category.  Even though it’s a joke, it stings deeply for the receiver of the insult.  Class, ethnicity and cultural practices are never fodder for jokes. Make sure your child knows this.

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Behavior Changes in Abused Children

Kids who are abused don’t always show physical signs of what is happening.  Often the signs come through as behavior changes in abused children.  Although some behaviors can be confused with typical growing pains, anytime a child makes a significant behavior change, it’s worth looking into why.

Children who are abused often switch from introverted to extroverted or the other way around.  It makes sense that a child would withdraw from others if he’s abused, but sometimes he’ll do just the opposite and become very extroverted to the point of being disruptive.  Abused children will become the eternal victim at times.  That means they are always getting picked on or whining about misdeeds done to them.  They’ve learned it is their position in life.  The other possibility is that they’re trying to get  a safe adult to notice their real victim status.

On the other hand, abused children can become the school bully as they search to find some power in their life.  It could be that violence is the only way they know how to move through the world.  It could also be a release of their own aggressions that are built up due to the abuse.  Besides the mean kid, you’ll sometimes encounter the overly clingy or affectionate kid.  This behavior change is due to the fact that the abused child is trying to cling to an adult they think will not hurt them.  Girls who are sexually abused may make this kind of affection somewhat inappropriate because they’ve been taught to be seductive by the abuser.

If children suddenly develop irrational fears of certain places or certain people, that could be a sign of abuse.  It may not be that the person they are afraid of is the abuser.  It could be that the person simply reminds them of an abuser.  Pay special attention to a child who does not want to go a certain place or be around a certain person.

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Bullying the Fat Kid

No doubt.  There is a serious problem with obesity in the United States, but is that really a good reason to keep bullying the fat kid?  Fat kids have been picked on as long as anyone can remember.  They’re often portrayed as bullies themselves.  That’s not to say that bullies don’t come in all shapes and sizes, but the way children are stereotyped lives with them for the rest of their lives.

The U.S. is a country that is obsessed with looks.  There are hundreds of glamour and fashion magazines that tell people of all ages how to get gorgeous in five easy steps.  The stars are spokespeople for everything in the world that can make a person look incredible.  The truth is most of us will never be that magazine cover girl or boy, and we shouldn’t feel bad about it.  Somewhere, there has been a disconnect between what we say about love and acceptance and how we actually live that out.

If you have a child who make disparaging remarks about an overweight kid, stop the talk immediately.  Children need to know that all people are valued and have something to offer if only invited to do so.  Fat doesn’t affect someone’s compassion or intelligence.  It doesn’t affect their loyalty to others.  Instead of allowing you child to make fun of the fat kid, encourage him to get to know that kid.  He may find a real friend for life.

It’s hard to make children understand that all that glamorous posturing won’t create lasting satisfaction.  On the other hand, it’s a parent’s responsibility to make sure the children are healthy, so feeding a child a poor and fattening diet not only destroys their self esteem, but it destroys their health.  Loving your children the right way can be tough, but it’s the only way to do it.

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Picking on the Gay Kid

One of the most notable forms of bullying today is that of homosexual children.  It is an orientation that is still considered to be changeable, deviant behavior.  Even though the wider medical community accepts it as a genetic orientation, it’s still an easy, guilt free target for bullies of all ages and backgrounds.

That means that gay kids get as much emotional assault from adults as the kids around them.  Maybe even their own parents are abusive because of their homosexuality.  These children live in constant worry, isolation, and even fear.  Most hold in the secret and develop some form of neurosis because of it.  Depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and destructive behaviors are common.  Add a bully or two to the mix and the outcome is painfully played out.

The nation has had several high profile gay student suicides in  recent years.  That, along with hate crimes that go as far as murder, make the bullying of gay children one of the most shamefully ignored issues in the greater social fabric.  Most people don’t think any form of bullying is right, but they may not actively speak out against bullying a gay or lesbian child.  There’s some bizarre idea that these children are making well informed choices to be something that they know will put them at risk of abuse.  It simply makes no sense.

Celebrities have always been the voice of the oppressed, and in recent months, more and more are speaking out to turn the national attention to it’s own shameful complacence.  The message that “it gets better,” and that all of us are valuable, beautiful people has been a welcomed campaign by those who have suffered through bullying as well as witnessed it being done to people they care about; especially children.  If more religious organizations would take a public stance against the situation, we would see real progress.

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Teach Your Child to Hit Back or Walk Away

What do you do if your child comes home with bruises time and time again?  If you’ve tried to resolve the issue with schools and the bully’s parents, and it keeps happening, it can become a very angry situation.  Should you give up and teach your child to hit back, or should you instruct him to walk away?

We’ve all heard those great stories where the little guy got fed up and wailed into the bully only to become an instant hero.  Some are very funny, and some are poignant. Sometimes, that’s all it takes and the bully either backs off or tries to be his victim’s new friend.  The problem is that hitting back is just a perpetuation of the problem.  The bully has just learned that there’s someone with more power than him, so he might just go find someone else to beat up.  Your kid has a new found, and dangerous power.  Don’t expect him to put up his fighting gloves forever.

On the other hand, it’s the walking away that just keeps getting the poor kid beat up.  Everyone knows that violence is not resolved with violence, but how can you make walking away work for your child?  Persistence is the key.  After awhile, the bully is going to get bored with the a kid who doesn’t give him any reaction.  He’ll move onto something else.  If the problem just keeps up, and no one is willing to stop the bully, a visit from a police officer can be a nice deterrent for the mean one.  If a violent kids thinks he’s immune from arrest, he’s wrong.  His parents will probably get the message, too.

Schools are notorious for being lax on bullying.  If the school is remiss, start your own anti-bullying campain and help all those kids who are picked on know they are wanted and valuable.  Different is good.  Kindness is better.  Awareness is everything.

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The Secret Language of Sexting

No matter who hard we try to protect our children, it is getting harder to do with every technological advancement.  The fast rise of texting means that all of that bathroom talk has gone live.  Kids now use a special language of acronyms for sexting.  That means they’re talking about sex through text messages.  Since this form of communication is without the flesh and blood experience, it can easily be used to bully a child or make an awkward child think he or she can get friends by engaging it dirty talk.  As a parent, get to know the secret language of sexting.

You’re paying the phone bill.  You agreed to let your child have texting, so you’re responsible for monitoring that phone at random, unexpected times.  Confiscate it and start scrolling those texts.  If you see some combination of letters you don’t recognize as a familiar acronym, demand to know what it means.  If your kid refuses to tell you, then you’ve just been given license to look it up yourself.

You can do that.  Simply search “sexting acronyms list,” and websites will pop up with lists of sex acronyms.  A few that should really alarm you are:
8 – that means oral sex
1174 – that means nude club
420 – that means marijuana
IWSN – that means I want sex now

Pretty scary isn’t it. Also check for pictures of your child exposing him or herself.  These texts get forwarded and the damage can’t be reversed.  Children have committed suicide over sexting scandals.  It started as a desperate attempt to be popular and it ended in the child being chastised as a slut or prostitute.  Kids are mean, and technology is fast.  Parents have to be technically savvy and on top of those texts and Facebook pages to really protect children from some damaging trap they’ll always regret.

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Yes, Your Kid is a Bully

Nobody wants to be the parent of a bully.  We’d like to think those kids come from bad families, but that’s not always the case.  Yes, your kid is a bully.  Sometimes you just can’t deny it.  If a teacher calls you and tells you that your child is bullying another kid, take it seriously.

Even if your kid acts like the perfect angel around you, he may be Mr. Hide when you’re not around. We can’t be completely in control of our kids all of the time, but we can be in control of stopping unwanted behavior.  The parents of the bully need to get to the underlying reason this is happening.  Do an honest self-assessment of your household.  How are you and your spouse getting along?  Is there any stress in the home that may make the child feel like he’s not in control?  Sometimes kids will act out against others to feel a sense of power.  Kids don’t really feel in control of their lives always.

It’s good to check with your child to find out if he’s been the victim of bullying himself.  Has assumed his aggressor’s role?  What kind of friends does your child have?  Often times, good kids do mean things because they want to be accepted by a certain group of friends. Or it could be that your child simply isn’t aware of the painful results of his actions.  It might seem fun to him, but it never occurred to him how he was affecting others.

If your kid is the a bully, talk with him and ask him how he would feel if some kid did mean things to him.  Make it clear that you will not tolerate him hurting other children.  If the bullying occurs on the internet, suspend priveledges.  And always make your child apolgize for his actions directly to the victim. There’s nothing like forgiveness to change a person.

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