I recently received an e-mail regarding this post and thought I had to share.  Bullying has become such a huge problem and when I read this article it really hit home.  Healthy Living is about keeping our bodies, minds and spirits alive and healthy.  Bullying can affect our spirits which in turn can greatly affect our health.  Be sure to check out the Healthier Kids Now website to read some fantastic articles.

A Radical New Approach to END BULLYING!

by PATRICK on AUGUST 7, 2011

You’ve probably heard the term “self-fulfilling prophecy” which means we are likely to manifest into our experience that which we repeatedly focus our thoughts and emotional energy upon.  “Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it” is another phrase most of us are familiar with which also means we are likely to experience that which we wish for (thinking about what we want with emotion).   Also interesting is that when we wish to NOT experience something we use the word “hope” when we say things like “I hope I don’t…,” “I hope they don’t…,” or “I hope it doesn’t…”

Most of us were told by our parents what they DON”T want us to do or be and we end up doing the same with our kids.   If you are a parent you can clearly see how the habit of asking for what we don’t want develops.

Don’t be late, don’t forget to brush your teeth, don’t be mean to others, don’t talk back, don’t run in the halls, don’t run with scissors, don’t hate others I don’t like that, I don’t want to go to bed, I don’t want to go to school,

We develop a habit of thinking this way over time and later in life we tend to focus on what we do NOT want like debt, weight, depression, illness and yes, bullying.

With school starting in only 3 more weeks, and for some kids even sooner, as parents we want to prepare our kids to get back into “learning and growing mode” and to start the new school year on the right foot.  But the truth is for tens of thousands, and perhaps even millions of kids anticipating the new school year starting in a few weeks is an extremely stressful time.

Last year more than 160,000 children stayed home from school every day because of emotional/physical stress, fear and anxiety and unfortunately that number is expected to be even higher this coming school year.  But why does that have to be?

Bullying is a huge culprit for a staggering number of children not receiving the education they deserve and as reasonable as it sounds that we would all love to eradicate bullying from our schools, THIS SIMPLY CANNOT HAPPEN WHEN THAT IS WHERE ALL OF OUR ATTENTION IS FOCUSED!

We all know that “what we focus our thoughts, emotions and actions upon expands or gets bigger in our experience,” so why do we focus so much attention on bullying when we know we are likely to then see more of it?

Bullying, bullying and more bullying…

Bullying is thrown in the face of parents and kids everywhere and every day during the school year.  Anti-bullying posters and NO HATE signs line the school halls, anti-bullying assemblies and interventions, national news features about bullying and cyber-bullying, not to mention anti-bullying programs and “zero tolerance” policies our schools are required to implement.   Yet we wonder why we are seeing a steady rise in the number of incidences and severity of bullying.

Awareness and education about the ramifications and consequences surrounding bullying is of course necessary and we want a bully to know their behavior is just not acceptable.

Can there be a solution to this global dilemma that is destroying the futures of so many of our children?

YES! TRY THIS ON…

Rather than focus all of our attention, emotions and actions upon something we DO NOT WANT FOR OUR KIDS (i.e. bullying) and WHAT IS WRONG (i.e. the decaying of our children’s moral character) Instead…

WE FOCUS ON WHAT WE WANT FOR OUR KIDS

Increase emotional literacy, compassion caring and kindness, community involvement, resilience, optimism and happiness.

WE FOCUS ON WHAT IS RIGHT WITH OUR KIDS

Our children’s ability to develop ALL OF THE ABOVE!

And there is actually a name given to this approach and it’s simply called Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and in fact this is starting to become a more widely accepted approach for schools across the country and around the world.

BUT HERE’S THE RUB MOM AND DAD…

Character and SEL education CANNOT BE LEFT SOLELY UP TO OUR SCHOOLS AND EDUCATORS TO PROVIDE OUR CHILDREN!

Character education MUST BEGIN AT HOME AND PROVIDED BY PARENTS!

A child is not born to be angry, temperamental and jealous or to be a bully.  We, their parents teach it to them and then we wonder why or simply deny our child is a bully or why our child is a target of bullies.  It means taking a close look at who their role models are.

I am a single dad with two amazing young boys who are 13 and 10 years old and like any parent my heart aches with sadness when one of my kids tells me about how mean other kids have been to them.  When my eldest son started sixth grade at a new school after our divorce a couple of years ago the bullying was almost overwhelming.  He was shunned as the “new kid” and made NO friends the entire school year.  At the time this was a massive blow to his self-esteem and self-confidence, not to mention his beliefs about others.

My first thought was “how can the school just stand by and watch this happen to my child”?  There MUST BE ACCOUNABILITY

But then I realized HE IS MY CHILD, and no one cares for him or loves him more than I do, so how could I expect his teachers or principal to be sole guardians of his emotional health?

It’s My Responsibility!

My children’s experiences throughout childhood help them learn how to react to future situations and circumstance that arise throughout life and by observing how I react to my own situations.   But to really help my kids I know I must model for them how to grow from adversities and react to situations in ways that ensure a positive outcome, but unless I learn how to find the learning and growing opportunity in my own adversities and interactions with others I can’t expect my children to handle their own in positive and productive ways.

Thoughts of Compassion

I mentioned to my son that when someone seems angry or is behaving in a way that looks like they are intentionally trying to hurt others feelings, it is likely because deep inside they feel powerless.   They may be in a situation in their life where they are being bullied by either a sibling or a neighbor or one of their own parents.  They may be in a situation where they are witnessing bullying on a regular basis at home, and they may have learned over time by watching a parent that when they feel powerless, anger and bullying others gives them a sense of power.  Even though it is a destructive sense of power, it still provides them a way to dispel the feeling of powerlessness.

We can begin to see those who bully others in a different light.  We and our children can learn to see others who are hurting with compassion and empathy rather than anger and fear.

The “Pool of Tears”

When I told my 10 year old son that it’s easier pull someone down into the pool when you are in it than it is to pull someone up and out of the pool when you are out of the pool on the edge, and the same is true when someone is angry or mean in that is easier for them to bring us down than it is for us to make them happier.  He said “it’s like the pool of tears” and he could feel compassion for those kids who are in that pool.  The term “Misery Loves Company” means others who are feeling poorly about themselves, hopeless or powerless will subconsciously want to bring others down with them to avoid the feeling of being alone in their misery, and those who are “on the edge of the pool” are the easiest pull down.

Helping Your Kids Recognize Their POWER!

Help your kids recognize when they have used their powerful character traits to overcome adversities and how using them resulted in building resilience and created a positive outcome of feeling great about themselves.  I want to teach my children that we all have the power and the strength to choose our own thoughts and even though others may TRY to influence our thoughts and emotions, the truth is all they are doing is TRYING! And if they succeed at shifting our emotions and cause us to think negative thoughts it is only because we allowed them to pull us down into the “pool of tears.”  Recognizing their true power and strengths helps our kids back away from the “edge of the pool.”  In fact as their strengths grow they may even find it easier to help lift others “out of the pool of tears.”

The Radical SHIFT in Thinking!

As Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “if we change the way we look at things the things we look at change” or as Maharishi Mahesh, the founder of Transcendental Meditation says “don’t fight the darkness, bring the light and the darkness will fade” perhaps if we incorporate this way of thinking into how we teach our children to be “good people” by focusing on being good people ourselves we will start to see change.

To actually focus all of our attention and education of being the people we want to be, having the life we want to have and living in a world we all want to live in will become the “self-fulfilling prophecy” we all want and deserve.

If we as parents adopt this way of being in our own lives our children can’t help but adopt the same in their own life, and bringing this way of thinking to our schools, our teachers and classrooms we just might start to see the shift we all want to see.

How about we give it a shot?  What have we got to lose?

Your thoughts??