How to stop bullies with dignity, compassion and science

Editor's Notes

• #2: Who I am – background.Why I teach this. – Science!!!
• #3: Let’s start by talking about what makes a bully tick. Dealing effectively with a bully requires you to know what it is they are hoping to achieve by bullying. Are they looking for status? Trying to impress someone? Are they trying to hide something by drawing attention away from themselves? The truth is you don’t know. And you may never know. But it’s still important to consider what is motivating a bully because it helps you to recognize that (click) bullies have their own problems. The reasons they are bullying usually have nothing to do with their victim and everything to do with their own issues of insecurity. This is really hard for children and some adults to understand and it’s really critical. In order to train your bully to not bully you, you have to put the focus on them and their needs. To do that, you need to realize, they aren’t be mean because they don’t like you. They are being mean because whatever it is they are dealing with is more than they can handle and it’s causing them to act out. (click) So don’t assume you know what they are dealing with. You might see them every day – but that doesn’t mean you know what’s really going on. (click) Once you understand this, it is very easy to feel compassion for the bully.
• #4: Now, why would I ask someone who is a victim of a bully to feel compassion for them? Because – feeling compassion for a bully has several very tangible benefits to you. (click) The first is that it puts you in the right frame of mind to actually implement the training you need to do to get the bullying to stop. We are going to get into this in more detail later, but basically, you are going to have to respond to what the bully does in an emotionless way. It is easier to do that when you are not emotionally invested in what is happening to you because you are instead focused on the insecurities and fears of the person you are trying to train. And this takes compassion. (click) The other reason to find compassion for a bully is because it helps you not be emotionally troubled by what the bully is doing or saying. It’s like being inoculated against bullying. The reason the cover of my book has a little girl with a forcefield around her is that is what feeling compassion for a bully does for you. It prevents the bully from being able to hurt you emotionally. Instead, you just feel bad for them. This doesn’t mean you should allow them to continue. It’s in the bully’s best interest to learn more productive and socially acceptable ways to interact with their fellow humans. But it does mean that by feeling compassion, you can forgive them for what they are doing even as they are doing it. (click) The reason forgiving them is important is because it allows you to move past it.It doesn’t help the bully, it helps you.And this is the hardest thing for people to grasp. And this is the one aspect of what I teach that people rebel against the most and you should expect your child to have problems with this as well.But it is your job as the parent to help them find that compassion for their bully. Because it is compassion that provides the emotional inoculation that will not only protect your child from being bullied, but will help them be a more compassionate person as they grow up into an adult. The more you can help them practice this through their childhood the better off they are going to be. And that means, you as the parent need to find a way to feel compassion for the little jerk who is making your kid cry. After all, if you can’t find that compassion, you won’t be able to help your child find that compassion. (pause) Just remember, the kid who is bullying is a just a kid. They weren’t born evil. They are just trying to find their way through interpersonal relationships despite their insecurities just like the rest of us are. And again, you don’t know what’s going on in their life. So don’t assume. Let me give you an example – my kid was hit on the school bus story (pause) Be an adult and a parent and consider the bully worthy of your compassion and try to find a solution that will help your child and help the bully become more well adapted at the same time. It may not be possible but again, by you making the effort, you are teaching your child to make that effort. And again, this isn’t going to leave your kid vulnerable. You are taking this step so that you can come up with a strategy to get the bullying to stop that will actually work.
• #5: Let’s move on to operant conditioning and how to train a bully not to bully. First a little background. I used to train dolphins. That’s me in the photo I went to college in Hawaii and was a volunteer trainer at a dolphin cognition research facility. The dolphin’s name was Hiapo btw. While there I learned how to train animals using operant and classical conditioning techniques. So that’s where I learned how to do this.Now, obviously, when I was a kid, my mom didn’t teach me operant conditioning. What she did teach me, in addition to feeling sorry for the bully, was, in a sense, to “ignore them.” And I’m sure you’ve all heard this advice, ignore them and a bully will go away. And it’s not bad advice, because it is based on operant conditioning techniques. It’s what you do when you extinguish a behavior. The problem is, that’s a short hand phrase for what you really want to do.And fortunately for me, my mom was a bit more specific when she told me what to do. And you need to be more specific too. Here’s what my mom told me. A bully wants you to respond to them, so don’t give them what they want. Don’t respond to them in the way they want you to. The difference between just ignore them and don’t give them the response they want makes all the difference in the world.
• #6: Questions – feedback Free resources – including the toolkit which includes 2 ½ hours of video instruction and workbooks to help you develop a strategy. Free lesson – how to talk to your child’s school about bullying. What to do if your child is accused of bullying. 51 free video lessons, downloads and more.