Facing Bullies While Retaining Humility
This is a message to Crawford County Students who face the very real issue of living life amongst bullies. The good news is, there are things you can do to help yourself and others to face this challenge and not only survive but also grow in emotional humility and maturity.
The bad news is, you will need this emotional humility and maturity throughout every phase of your life. Unfortunately, young bullies typically grow up to be adult bullies, and you will most assuredly face the same bullying behaviors at some time in your adult interactions whether at work and in your personal lives.
For this communication, I will simply define bullying as behavior intended to harm or hurt someone physically, emotionally, or socially and often involves an imbalance or a perceived imbalance of power.
Statically, there are more reports of school bullying amongst girls than boys, so I will offer some information next from the roles of bullies within a girls’ social group:
The leader or the “Queen” is the one who has the power of the group and can resort to manipulation and control to keep the power.
The “Sidekick” is the person who always supports the queen because that is where the power is, she allows herself to be controlled and manipulated, in order to fit in.
The “Wannabee” is the person who wants to be just like the leader enjoying the power/popularity and will go to great lengths to get the approval.
The “Gossiper” gains her power from seeking information from others to improve her position.
The “Floater” is the girl who moves in and out of different groups not needing a specific group for her self-esteem and identity. She does not seek power but shows respect and does not exclude other girls.
The “Direct Bully” is the girl who uses physical violence with pushing, shoving, and threatening types of behavior.
The “Target” is the person receiving the hurtful, mean behaviors. She can become a victim when she allows the other girls’ indirect bullying and mean behaviors of exclusion rumors, eye-rolls, hurtful teasing, muttering under their breath, etc. to negatively affect herself by feeling humiliated, exposed, and tempted to change to fit in.
The “Bystander” is the person who witnesses the bullying or mean-girl behavior and can feel caught in the middle. She may be afraid of being the next victim or afraid to go against the one with the power or not wanting to choose sides between friends.
These terms come from Dr. Nicki Crick and should be used for personal understanding and not for publicly labeling others.
In our current world where social media interactions have taken the place of face-to-face relationships and interactions, young people all over find themselves struggling to find their place, build relationships with others, as well as a healthy sense of “self.”
This leads to loneliness, depression, self-injury, poor academic performance, low self-esteem, suicide ideation, and anger. This is so common with our children and young adults.
Our goal as school leaders, teachers, pastors, parents, and family members should be to help you become self-assured, independent and confident adults who interact with others in a healthy, helping way.
I personally believe that helping you develop a healthy sense of self and emotional intelligence, insight into strategies, and skill-building will help you more than anything else to counteract the relational aggression of bullying.
First, you need to understand why the bully feels driven to bully. Typically, bullies are insecure, unskilled, and have very low self-esteem. They try to maintain social power or elevate their status by hurting or humiliating others. They look for ways to feel more competent or powerful by pulling others down. They can pick their victims based upon feelings of resentment or envy, or sometimes they just pick someone they believe will quietly take the pain, and not fight back.
Because of this, it’s not a stretch to understand that some bullies are often manipulators or even narcissists who gravitate toward those they can control. The bully might perceive you as an easy target if you are soft-spoken and compliant. There is a saying, “some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others.”
Unfortunately, children learn to bully early on by social learning—they copy the aggressive behavior of others. I say this to underscore the importance of being mindful about what you fill your minds and hearts with. If you consistently watch violent videos and movies and listen to music that denigrates and objectifies others, then you will find it easier to act out on those images and thoughts.
A note to parents—children imitate what they see and hear. Be very careful about the messages you send to your children when there is constant fighting in the home, cursing and threatening others within your sphere of influence, as this could be something that one day you recognize in your own children. Don’t glamorize and normalize conflict and harsh punishment. Try to make your home a place of peace and not chaos. Your children will benefit from a sense of peace at home because this world offers very little respite for them. If your children are miserable at home, they may feel they have the right to break the spirits of others so they can feel better about their own miseries.
Back to students, let me ask you if you recognize yourself or your situation in any of this information given? Are you the bully, or are you the bullied?
If you are the bully, know that you can become a better version of yourself—someone you can feel good about, and this can happen at the moment you choose. Spend some time building your own character by self-reflection. Humility comes from a deep awareness of how you weaken the goodness within you when you cause others to suffer. The flip side of that is that whenever you are kind and helpful to someone else, you strengthen your own good character. And like any exercise, the more you show kindness and empathy to others, the stronger your character becomes.
With that said, if you are the bullied, don’t give the bully the emotional reaction he or she seeks. Bullies love chaos and feel the most powerful when they can control your emotions. They want to see you upset, crying, and scared. Take that power away from the bully by maintaining self-control and asking questions such as, “Do you really believe that?” Take the energy away by taking away the emotional response. Starve the bully—strong emotional reactions are food for their damaged souls.
I love the story where a bully was trying to humiliate another student because she knew her clothes came from Goodwill. The student refused to be bullied by saying, “you right, my mom found this gem at Goodwill, and it only cost three bucks.” With that she smiled and walked on leaving the bully without the satisfaction of the emotional shaming that was intended. Sometimes, your reality is what you say it is, and not what someone else tries to define. Self-confidence goes a long way to defeat a bully.
Recently, I met with the parents of a student who was being bullied. One strategy at the middle and high school includes all parties getting together for a conversation. The parents in this case relayed that their daughter was hesitant to meet face-to-face with her bully because she was frightened and intimidated. I understand this; however, I want to encourage any student who is being bullied to find strength in their own sense of self-worth and know that while it may be uncomfortable, confronting a bully can build self-confidence and self-esteem.
Knowing that you have the courage to face your enemies will be the first of many steps towards taking good care of yourself and refusing to let others control and hurt you. Otherwise, as I mentioned earlier, the young bullies will grow up to be adult bullies and you will face these same issues the rest of your life. Take a stand now, and refuse to be a victim.
Anything worth doing is hard. Words hurt, but the voices you hold inside about yourself can be much more harmful if you don’t believe you can stand up to those who hurt you. Believe in your worth and value and develop the humility to know that not every action demands a reaction, but that every person deserves to be treated with respect because you don’t know how bad even the bully has it at home.
On a more personal note, my wife and I adopted twin daughters when they were 9-months old. One twin was very tiny and bullies always seemed to gravitate towards Jena. In first grade she had her own “nemesis”—her word not ours. This girl pulled Jena out of a bathroom stall as they were both trying to take their turn during a short break after lunch. Jena was pulled out and slung across the floor into the wall. The teacher heard the commotion, and came inside the bathroom. She took both girls out into the hallway and very well-intentioned asked them to shake hands and tell one another that they were sorry.
Needless to say, I did not believe this to be the best solution to the problem, and yet there was the teacher with 20 first graders needing to potty and get back to class. Teachers don’t really have a lot of time to assess the complexities of situations and make psychologist-grade decisions on the fly, along with doing everything else that they are required to do.
We made an appointment with Jena’s sweet teacher and very calmly pointed out that young girls build their own sense of self-worth by the messages we often unintentionally send to them by our actions. You see, the message my daughter received from that incident was if someone physically hurts her, then it must be because she did something wrong, and therefore, deserved to be hurt by the aggressor. By asking her to apologize to her bully when she did nothing wrong, a very strong, yet dangerous message was sent and received. Her teacher cried, and said she never thought of it that way.
We did not want our daughter to grow up thinking she deserved to be treated badly. We began teaching her to stand up to her bullies and never be afraid to call bullies out—loudly and publicly. That same little girl, who weighed only two pounds at birth has grown into a strong capable sailor who is embedded with a Marine unit in California. She calls us often and thanks us for helping her to be tough but kind. She is still faced with bullies every day; the only difference is, she knows how to handle them, and she refuses to be a victim.
I wish you all a very safe and Merry Christmas. Love and care for yourself, but more importantly, develop the humility and empathy to love others, even those who mistreat you.
Anthony Aikens
Superintendent