Solve Bullying Problems by Teaching About Bullying, Not Resilience or Empathy
Recently I listened to a presentation by a nationally recognized expert on cyberbullying in an event sponsored by a regional organization focused on kindness and justice. I was curious to hear what he had to say about preventing and resolving cyberbullying problems. The social media landscape changes constantly, and I try to stay current on new applications, trends, and ways that students use technology to engage with each other. This speaker is also one of the authors of the guidance on cyberbullying published on a major bullying prevention website, so I was excited for the possibility of learning something new.
After showing slides with a few updated statistics, he shifted to discussing steps for prevention and resolution. While I was expecting to hear concrete actions that parents and educators can take to address an immediate, ongoing bullying problem, he instead talked about resilience and empathy, character traits that, he admitted, take years for a person to develop.
His guidance was surprising and disappointing. Students who are being bullied have an immediate problem. They are being harmed and need help. Having an adult try to help a child by fostering resilience and empathy over a multiyear period is not an effective solution to a bullying problem that requires immediate attention. We give a hungry child an apple, not seeds to grow an apple tree that will bear fruit years in the future. The speaker’s additional suggestion of going to the school or the police for help did not make sense to me either. If an expert in the field of cyberbullying cannot provide specific steps on how to address the problem, how could experts in other fields be expected to help?
There are steps a parent can take to provide immediate help. When a child is struggling with math, the solution is to help the child understand math. It’s the same with bullying. We can teach kids what bullying is, why it happens, and what they can do to get the aggressor’s behaviors to stop. A child who learns that they are being targeted not because of an aspect of their body, their ethnicity, the way they dress, or some other personal characteristic but because the aggression provides the aggressor with a social benefit will realize that the bullying is not personal and they are not flawed. The relief they’ll feel can be immediate. They’ll understand that aggression—whether physical, verbal, written, or relational, and whether delivered face-to-face, indirectly, or over social media—is intended to help aggressors maintain or improve their own social standing among peers. A target will know that aggressors who use physical intimidation are not looking to hurt the target but simply to instill fear in order to earn the respect of observing peers. They’ll know that if they laugh along with mockery and insults, they’ll render the behavior ineffective at giving the aggressor a social benefit and it will likely stop. They’ll know that if their friends suddenly start ignoring them that someone is turning their friends against them and that they need to take immediate action to stop and reverse the damage. When a child learns how bullying works and why it happens, they can avoid the harm and take actions to stop it on their own. As an added bonus, they may even realize that their own behaviors are causing harm to others.
And good news on the resilience and empathy front: Empowering children by teaching them about bullying allows them to take action to fix a problem, which develops resilience. Educating them on the effect that these types of behaviors have on others fosters empathy. Resilience and empathy are developed by understanding and resolving a bullying problem; they are not the means to resolve it.
Resilience and empathy are characteristics that we want our children and students to develop. But as the speaker noted, these characteristics take years to develop and are fostered by both an association with others who have these characteristics and through life experiences. While resilience and empathy are a determinant on whether a child will engage in aggression against targets and how a child will respond to aggression, they are not the solution children (or parents) need when they are being harmed by the aggression of a peer. Educating and empowering children and adults about the problem and various ways to solve it is the answer.