Everyone Has Their Part to Play in Bullying Prevention

The Rockaway Township School District in New Jersey recently settled with the parents of Mallory Grossman over its failure to take appropriate action to stop the bullying that led to Mallory’s death by suicide. The district of the Covington Middle School in Indiana may be headed for a similar outcome due to its failure to stop the bullying against Terry Badger III, who also died by suicide as a result of bullying. In these cases, the students and their parents did their parts in trying to get the bullying to stop, but the schools apparently did not. So what are the parts that everyone should play to resolve a bullying problem? The targets of bullying have two parts to play. First, they need to try to get the bullying to stop on their own by using active responses to the aggression that render the aggression ineffective. However, to be fair, targets often have to be taught how to respond effectively—so if they haven’t learned, this won’t work. In that case, targets should reach out to a trusted adult to help solve the problem. That trusted adult has an obligation to help the target in a way that does not make the problem worse. Help can include educating the target on effective responses to bullying or, if the adult hasn’t been trained on ways to respond, engaging adults who have the ability to monitor times when bullying is occurring and the authority to intervene to stop the bullying behavior. These adults are, of course, the educators in the school where the bullying is occurring. There are plenty of actions that educators can take to get the behavior to stop, the key being enforcing a consequence that deprives the aggressor of the social benefit received from the bullying and one that results in a social cost to the aggressor. In other words, educators can use the same motivator that drives the bullying behavior to get it to stop. The parents of the aggressors have a role to play as well. They need to be informed of the aggression by the school, however, in a way that separates their child from their child’s behavior. Their child is engaging in normal, natural, age-appropriate social behavior; however, that behavior is causing harm to another student and must stop. The parents of the aggressor need to support the school in any constructive actions it takes to resolve the problem (discipline systems that levy a punitive consequence for bullying simply do not work). Further, the parents of the aggressor have an obligation to ensure that the bullying does not continue when their child is not at school, such as through social media channels (cyberbullying). One of the mechanisms of the CirclePoint Bullying Prevention Program is “chain-of-custody awareness,” in which all adults who have oversight responsibility for an aggressor and a target are made aware of the bullying problem and ensure that the bullying behaviors do not continue. That chain-of-custody awareness should also include the parents of the aggressor. Of course, the aggressor also has a part to play, which is simply to stop the bullying behaviors. Aggressors are fully expected to want to boost their own social status among peers; however, they need to find ways to do it that don’t involve engaging with the target. If everyone does their part, then bullying problems will get resolved, and without tragedy.