How Can We Stop Bullying?
Posted by Lisa Hendey in Just me on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 5:50 PM
Today is “National Stop Bullying Day”. This event, which happens on the second Wednesday of every February, encourages schools to conduct “Stop Bullying” activities to eradicate the spread of a trend that seems to be running rampant. I agree that Bullying needs to be stopped, the old fashioned “in your face” type of bullying, as well as its new-fangled cousin, “cyberbullying”.
My boys have been bullied, and have unfortunately also been on the mean end a time or two with minor infractions. Around our house, we’ve always had a zero tolerance for this type of thing. But I know a few parents who will take their child’s side of any argument, including trying to justify bullying behavior. Ultimately, we can’t be with our kids at every moment of their lives, so the lessons we teach them about their faith and the types of people they are called to be in this world need to include age appropriate discussions of bullying.
While observing today’s press on how we can eradicate bullying, I’ve also been carrying on a conversation on my Facebook page about the place of Anonymity in today’s online communications. I feel like there is an incredibly strong connection between bullying tendencies and those who seem emboldened by a sense of anonymity online to engage in behavior that they would never dream of in “real life”. Knowing that we are never truly anonymous online, one commenter on that thread pointed to the fact that since we’re physically removed from one another and not likely to ever meet in person, we allow ourselves to cross boundaries we’d never cross in our daily face to face communications.
I wonder if all of the technology—the texting, the facebooking and the IMing—is training our children to be more emotionally vacant… more “anonymous”... with one another to the degree that it permits them to be OK with bullying one another in new and creative ways. As someone who loves her gadgets, I’d hate to think that something as wonderful as my iPhone could be a tool that could do such harm to others. Since this is new and evolving every day, we’re wise to cling to the precepts of our faith as we look for solutions to these new-fangled dilemmas.
As I ponder all of this, I wonder if your school is involved in “National Stop Bullying Day” or what you think might be the answer to an ever growing problem.
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