Bullying and The Cold Spot, Part 3

I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

Some practitioners are troubled with the proliferation of bullying programs in our schools (for instance, see Bully Nation by Susan Eva Porter). Their argument is interesting: we’ve adopted a bully-victim mindset that makes the problem worse and not better. According to this viewpoint, labeling one kid a bully and the other a victim has unfortunate consequences. First, the “bully language” is overly simplified and doesn’t address the nuance of the situation and the kids involved. Second, by being labeled, the kids are assigned and seen as fitting the role – which is very hard to escape. As a result, they are either demonized or pitied, and they cannot learn from experiences and grow from the experiences. For the “victim”, this produces victimhood and does not promote resilience. For the “bully”, there is no chance to reinvent him or herself. Third, labels make all kids the enemy – they are pitted against one another (when really, this is an adult problem in terms of how we should structure environments and deal with problematic behavior). Finally, developing anti-bullying programs, which often have zero-tolerance policies, sets up kids to fail – because kids, being kids, are bound to make mistakes in the future.

The folks who see anti-bullying programs as problematic would like to see the bully-victim language discarded. Instead, the emphasis should be on helping kids who are on the receiving end (I’m trying to avoid the “v-word”) develop resilience. Teaching and developing resilience would involve helping kids learn how to deal with unpleasant situations, develop coping skills, assertiveness skills, social support and communication skills, etc. – anything that would lead to personal growth. For the kids who perpetrate the unwanted behavior (avoiding the “b-word”), a pattern of responding should be set up which insures safety first (for all kids) and includes swift consequences for misbehavior – and consequences which “fit the crime” (this includes clarity of expectations – kids need to know ahead of time what is expected of them, and they need to know that consequences will be applied consistently).  In all cases, adults are there to support the kids, remain calm, and model and demonstrate appropriate problem solving behavior.

The advocates to eliminate or move away from anti-bullying programs raise some interesting points. The methods for dealing with the behavior seem on target to me. I don’t know how well their approach would work in a truly dangerous or intimidating environment, especially with older teenagers. I can report on a case with which I am familiar where a therapist took such an approach in helping a child who was bullied unmercifully. The therapist worked with the child to develop coping skills and resilience skills to address the painful distress and isolation of being a target. The results were phenomenal. This kid came out of the counseling with a stronger sense of self, an awareness of personal strength, an awareness of how to deal with unpleasant people, and a renewed sense of assertiveness. This is not to say that the experience became a “piece of cake”. The kid had to deal with some very difficult things – but that kid dealt with them and matured as a result.  While this success was remarkable, I am not convinced that we should move away from anti-bullying programs. For me, the jury is still out.

All of these thoughts as a result of a horror novella called The Cold Spot… I hope Mr. Faherty is pleased that his work generated these thoughts. Bullying is a very sad and frustrating problem, and he captures the issue in a unique way – within a ghost story and then some.  Whatever the form of the narrative, we need to be constantly reminded of how kids are hurt – and in some cases very deeply – on a daily basis from peers while right under the noses of adults.

Okay, I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

A number of factors related to bullying often come as a surprise to people. First, kids who do the bullying are not the stereotypical antisocial hoodlums. Very often these kids can move among various roles: bully, popular kid, smart kid, jock, etc. They can be members of multiple groups. Second, they do not bully all of the time, so they have friends and social groups – and, this is interesting, they often report having been bullied as well. Third, while boys tend to engage in more physical bullying than girls, girls are masters at relational aggression (e.g., spreading rumors, excluding a girl from the group, withdrawing friendship).  The intent of this social manipulation is to cause damage to another kid’s social standing or self esteem. When you include both physical and relational aggression into the mix, gender differences between bullying in boys and girls disappears. Regardless, bullying of both forms indicates forms of aggressive behavior that occur within a context of an imbalance of power, are intentionally harmful, and occur repetitively.

The consequences of bullying are tremendous for victims: higher rates of depression, stress, isolation, anxiety, and in some cases suicidal ideation. Peer relationships are disrupted, and the disruption can persist into adulthood with these individuals having difficulty developing and maintaining relationships and trusting others.

Interventions to decrease bullying in school settings generally involve: arranging or altering the environment to minimize the circumstances which allow bullying to occur (this could be as simple as having teachers standing at their classroom doors during class transitions to monitor the hallways), training teachers and other school personnel how to identify and respond quickly if they observe bullying, establishing rules and specific consequences for certain forms of misbehavior or problem behavior which are consistently applied,  and developing a solution-oriented mindset where teachers and staff can share solutions that they have found successful in reducing the problem behavior.

I will continue with how The Cold Spot got me thinking about bullying in the next blog…

We’ve seen some startling examples of the negative impact of bullying on victims: media reports of suicide and attempted suicide by children, adolescents, and young adults in college. In addition, many personal accounts of misery and depression of those victims reach us seemingly daily. Yet, the issue persists, despite many attempts to change the way our schools operate and efforts to change our very cultural attitudes toward bullying.

I was reminded again about the topic of bullying after my recent read of The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty. I found his use of bullying as a device for framing his horror novel to be rather unique and I enjoyed it immensely. As a psychologist and a professor, I am used to addressing bullying from those professional perspectives. I teach a graduate level course entitled Counseling Children and Adolescents, and one of the favorite topics is bullying. The reason, of course, is that the graduate students in our counseling program who are placed in settings (schools and clinics) where they work with kids often come face to face with this issue. Dealing with bullying is difficult. Circumstances vary across incidents, the situations and kids involved are often quite complex, and people (that is, adults) often don’t know how to address it.

I will continue with a discussion on bullying prompted by reading The Cold Spot in the next blog…