Breaks my heart.

[Meds]

A friend of mine posted this on her facebook page. Its moving and breaks my heart that this happens in schools.

Words are worse than Sticks and Stones

Brave girl for posting this, I hope her life gets better.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

.....geez, she's not even in High School.  And that's far worse than Junior High was for me. 

I hope her circumstances change.  Its a real tragedy what kids will do to others.

King

[X]

I think bullying has always been really bad, but now, because of social media, we see it more and it's getting worse. I don't think that anyone hasn't been through the pain of being bullied in some way, but as we grow older, many of us put those incidents behind us and forget how painful they were when they were happening.

I also don't see a way to stop it. Children can be these spiteful self absorbed selfish beings and as much as we try to teach them to be better, it doesn't always work. As a parent, I do my best everyday to teach my kids to not be bullies and that words are only words. The problem with that is that as logical as the solution might seem, children are these bouncing balls of emotion and logic doesn't help them deal with the pain of the words used against them.

I also think that social media is partly to blame for this. Sign on to any MMO or gaming site and you can see how children today have no real concept that there are other real people on the other end of their rants. They don't care either. They put themselves at the center of their own universes and have no problems lashing out at strangers, be they adults or children.

I think that we're slowly watching the social skills and respect of a entire generation atrophy under the weight of a world where they don't have to have personal face to face interaction with the people they attack and abuse. It's far easier to attack someone on the internet, over game chats, and on social media sites because your targets can't finally rise up and punch the bully in the face in the front of the school and take away their power.

I also think that too many parents have fun house mirror perceptions of their children. They don't see what their children are doing, so they don't look past the surface of the behavior that their children show. Everyone wants their kid to not be "that kid" and hope creates a certain blindness in parents that assist in this behavior continuing.

We need to stop this. We've always needed to stop this, but we really need to get together as parents to figure out how. We need to create the tools to stop this problem. It's never been the responsibility of the schools to do this, but we've placed it on their shoulders for far too long. Schools don't have the actual power to deal with this. Bullying doesn't start and stop during the hours of school. At best, they should only be used as an alert device to warn us of potential problem and when that bell is sounded, parents need to get away from the mentality of the bully being someone else's kid and teach their child.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I agree with what you said X.  But until parents take responsibility, this will be a constant problem. 

King

[Geekyfanboy]

Schools need to adopt a ZERO Tolerance rule for bullying. And parents need to be held responsible.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Schools need to adopt a ZERO Tolerance rule for bullying. And parents need to be held responsible.

There is a no-tolerance rule for bullying at all schools as far as I'm aware.  But the reason cases like her's exist is due to the simple fact that it is impossible to control people's actions at all hours of the day.  Short of a prison that is.  People can talk under their breath, yell it across the room, etc.  Text messaging is another added problem.  Papers put into backpacks when the teacher isn't looking.  There is simply no way of destroying bullying without parent reinforcement.  And the methods I just named are only a few of the ways bullying can happen. 

People can be at both sides of the spectrum.  I see no way of stopping it reasonably as things are.  I wish there was...but simply put, friends, family and support can get kids through tough times. 

King

[turtlesrock]

there's been bully prevention programs at school lately. since they started the number of times i see it in the hallways has gone from 0 to 2 or 3 times a day (and way more if you count busses) i can't really thing of a reason why that is. shouldn't the bully prevention videos, talks, newsletters, etc. be lowering the number of cases instead of raising them? ??? i just don't get it.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

there's been bully prevention programs at school lately. since they started the number of times i see it in the hallways has gone from 0 to 2 or 3 times a day (and way more if you count busses) i can't really thing of a reason why that is. shouldn't the bully prevention videos, talks, newsletters, etc. be lowering the number of cases instead of raising them? ??? i just don't get it.

If anti-drug/anti-smoking/anti-drink-while-driving messages worked in school, we would have an entire generation that did none of it.  Current evidence says otherwise.

Not trying to be negative, I'm just saying, that's how it is, kids rebel against adults, kids want to try new things, they don't see smoking as a bad thing.  Those bullies?  Don't see what they are doing as wrong.  For whatever reason that might be. 

King

[Bryancd]

I agree with what you said X.  But until parents take responsibility, this will be a constant problem. 

King

x3, and although I am not a parent, I think another parental issue is that many want to be their kids best firend and not their parent.

[Rico]

Schools need to adopt a ZERO Tolerance rule for bullying. And parents need to be held responsible.

Speaking as someone quite familiar with both school policies and by having two kids, I can tell you a zero tolerance policy is in place in schools these days.  Do they catch everything that happens - certainly not.  Quite a bit happens on bus rides, walks to school, etc.  All teachers and parents can do is try and keep their eyes open, talk to their students and kids and try to stop things before they get really bad.  This is not an easy to thing to stop, but I will say it has on average gotten better over the years.

[Bryancd]

This is not an easy to thing to stop, but I will say it has on average gotten better over the years.

Or has migrated online.

[Geekyfanboy]

Schools need to adopt a ZERO Tolerance rule for bullying. And parents need to be held responsible.

This is not an easy to thing to stop, but I will say it has on average gotten better over the years.

I have to disagree that it's gotten better..  like Bryan said there are so many more ways to bully now, via facebook, blogs, email, you tube and it seems like were hearing about kids killing themselves weekly because of bullying. I've seen numerous video of kids fighting or being picked on and teachers walking right by. I have experience it's personally being picked on and seeing teacher ignore the situation or if you do complain about it they tell you to toughen up and that they can't do anything about it unless they see it. So though school have a zero tolerance rule they do not enforce it.

[Bryancd]

I have to disagree that it's gotten better..  like Bryan said there are so many more ways to bully now, via facebook, blogs, email, you tube and it seems like were hearing about kids killing themselves weekly because of bullying. I've seen numerous video of kids fighting or being picked on and teachers walking right by. I have experience it's personally being picked on and seeing teacher ignore the situation or if you do complain about it they tell you to toughen up and that they can't do anything about it unless they see it. So though school have a zero tolerance rule they do not enforce it.

This also begs the question, which if memory serves we have discussed before regarding the suicides of gay teens, is bullying worse today or are we just hearing about it and being exposed to it more due to social media? What used to be done in relative anonymity is now on YouTube.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I have to disagree that it's gotten better..  like Bryan said there are so many more ways to bully now, via facebook, blogs, email, you tube and it seems like were hearing about kids killing themselves weekly because of bullying. I've seen numerous video of kids fighting or being picked on and teachers walking right by. I have experience it's personally being picked on and seeing teacher ignore the situation or if you do complain about it they tell you to toughen up and that they can't do anything about it unless they see it. So though school have a zero tolerance rule they do not enforce it.

This also begs the question, which if memory serves we have discussed before regarding the suicides of gay teens, is bullying worse today or are we just hearing about it and being exposed to it more due to social media? What used to be done in relative anonymity is now on YouTube.

This is my opinion about the Mainstream news.  Violence and the "horrors" of humanity I don't think is any worse than before, its just brought to focus because we can now absorb it from the internet or the TV which focuses heavily on it. 

King

[Geekyfanboy]

I have to disagree that it's gotten better..  like Bryan said there are so many more ways to bully now, via facebook, blogs, email, you tube and it seems like were hearing about kids killing themselves weekly because of bullying. I've seen numerous video of kids fighting or being picked on and teachers walking right by. I have experience it's personally being picked on and seeing teacher ignore the situation or if you do complain about it they tell you to toughen up and that they can't do anything about it unless they see it. So though school have a zero tolerance rule they do not enforce it.

This also begs the question, which if memory serves we have discussed before regarding the suicides of gay teens, is bullying worse today or are we just hearing about it and being exposed to it more due to social media? What used to be done in relative anonymity is now on YouTube.

I don't think it's any worse but I don't think it's any better... I do think we hear about it more because the world is so connected now.