Help a Bully!

Insight into bullies and bullying. Bullies may need to be relabeled. People bully because they don't know where else to go to see that their opinion matters. They start teasing someone, see how it affects them and they learn they do have power with their voice and words. They don't fully understand the other side of it because that person may have the same home-life but their personalities are different so they cope differently.

I keep seeing and hearing about bullying laws, but to make such laws work, we need the adults to be willing to change. Until the adult or adults in the lives of bullies that causes the bully to act out the way they do is handled accordingly, (gets treatment, everyone else has an intervention for the person's ugly attitude...whatever you gotta do) then the child or children aren't going to have a chance to see that other coping skills will help themselves much better than aggression will.

The same goes for adults. I treat adults like I do children, but I can use more words with adults and the older a person is, the more they will understand empathy. With children I get to teach them empathy and words by being fun, loving, fun loving, and engaging so they want to understand what I am saying. If they don't then I don't force the issue yet and I don't often have to explain too much, but I fully understand that people will think about what they are trying to work out while they go through their day so they will work out at some point in their life what it means for them -in this case, to be empathetic. Anything can happen that stops them from grasping a concept. Someone might put them down verbally later in the day or week or they might get hit by a parent or friend. Anything that makes them stress too much whether it's in anger or sadness, keeps us from learning. This might explain why America is so low ranking in test scores. Maybe we can finally stop with the surface bandaids and get to the actual problems. Many teachers know what the issues are, why not ask them.

So. To help a bully, find the reason they don't feel appreciated, find the reason they don't feel like their opinion matters. Then learn about the person and how to approach them with the possible need to change.