Catherine DePino - Who Says Bullies Rule?: Common Sense Tips to Help Your Kids Cope

Acknowledgments

Id like to thank Dr. Thomas Koerner, vice president and editorial director, for his helpfulness, kindness, and excellent insights. Im also grateful to Lindsey Schauer, editorial assistant, for her infinite patience and constant assistance. Thanks also to Della Vach, assistant managing editor, for her expertise in helping produce this book.

My daughter, Shayna DePino Kudgis, has provided invaluable insights into the world of school counseling in helping bullied children. Id like to also acknowledge my husband Andrew and daughters, Melissa DePino Cooper and Lauren DePino, for their constant support and love.

Introduction

Note to Parents

Can you remember what it felt like to come face-to-face with a teaser, excluder, or a hardcore bully? Do you remember the words, sounds, smells, and sights that surrounded you? If so, youll want to read this book so that you can help your child lessen and then stop the pain that bullying causes.

Who Says Bullies Rule? offers specific tips you can give your child to prevent bullying before it begins. It also gives tips for stopping bullying before it gets too hard to handle. With your help, your children will know when they can deal with a bullying episode themselves and when to turn to an adult for help.

What can you tell your children about their own appearance so that they wont become easy targets for bullies? Some children arent aware that how they dress and act can attract a bullys attention. Learn how the way children walk, talk, or move makes them easy prey for harassment.

Also, Who Says Bullies Rule? underscores the importance of working together with the school to help your children ward off bullies. Youll need to know how to use the channels in your school system to get the best results possible for your child.

Additionally, this book also gives advice about dealing with the different types of bullying that your children will most likely encounter.

Perhaps the most important feature of this book is that it addresses the significance of having your children pay attention to their common sense to anticipate and deal with bullies actions.

Even the youngest children can use their common sense to evaluate teasing to know if it is a silly joke or something more serious. They can develop the ability to sense which areas in the school and in the neighborhood to avoid, thus preventing someone from harming them physically or emotionally. Moreover, they will use their common sense to know when to react and when to ignore bullying.

Ill talk about the importance of constant communication with your child on a daily basis so that you know exactly where your child stands when it comes to his or her peer group.

Once you help your children deal with bullying, they will enjoy the peace and freedom that is everyones birthright. When your children learn to use common sense coupled with bully prevention techniques, they will not be afraid to go to school, to take the school bus, or to have lunch in the school cafeteria.

No child should ever have to tolerate physical or mental abuse at the hands of a bully. You are the first line of defense against bullying. This book will show you what to do to help keep your child safe, but moreover, to empower your child to deal with bullying.

Introduction

Note to Educators

If youre an educator reading this book, you know the importance of working with children and parents in preventing and stopping bullying. Very often you are the first one to learn that a bully is harassing a child. You know what a vital role you play in preventing and stopping this damaging behavior by educating children and parents.

Perhaps the most important thing you can do is to keep parents informed if you suspect their childs experiencing bullying. Thats not an easy order with everything else youre called to do during the school day, but it could mean the difference between life and death in some cases. Weve seen the havoc bullying can cause with the rash of depression and suicides in children of all ages in recent years.

If you are a school administrator, you may want to consider giving a copy of this book to PTA members to encourage them to work together with the schools to prevent and stop bullying at all grade levels.

It is only when we are willing to work together as a team and to keep one another informed about bullying that we will gain momentum in our goal of putting an end to the bullying cycle that is claiming our kids peace of mind, and, in all too many cases, their lives.

Note

To avoid awkwardness in language usage, I alternate the pronouns he and she throughout this text.

Chapter One

Keep Your Child a Step ahead of Bullying

Beware: Bullies Can Strike Anywhere

As a teacher, Ive witnessed many types of bullying: name-calling, teasing, hitting, ignoring, cyber bullyingyou name it. Ive seen bullying in the classroom, the lunchroom, the gym, the bathroom, the school yard, the school bus, in the neighborhood, and on Facebook. Some kids have confided that their own brothers, sisters, and cousins shun them, call them unspeakable names, or beat them up in their own homes.

In one inner-city school, kids who earned good grades avoided the lunchroom for fear their classmates would attack them, so they took their lunch to an empty classroom and ate alone. Others chose to eat lunch with a teacher whod befriended them. They did this on the sly, fearful of risking a bullys revenge, which could range from taunts about being the teachers pet to a fierce beating.

Most bullying victims hesitate to seek help because theyre afraid the bullies will retaliate and subject them to worse tortures. They believe they have no choice but to live in dread of the bullys next attack. They dont want to take school or public transportation for fear of getting beaten up; they hold off using the bathroom because bullies hang out there; and they avoid the school yard, where bullies often lie in wait.