ListenTeach children well – about bullying
If it can happen to Miss New York, it can happen to any child.
Bullies, it seems, have indiscriminate tastes, lashing out because, for whatever reason, it gives them the illusion of power.
But bullies – as we grownups are wont to tell our children who suffer their wrath – are weak. That’s not so easy to comprehend when you are on the receiving end of name-calling, physical assaults and social ostracism.
Kaitlin Monte, of Pittsford, N.Y., who was crowned Miss New York this past June, is vibrant, intelligent and self-assured. In just a few months, she’ll go on to represent New York at the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas.
But that confidence was once shaken. Like many others, she suffered the wrath of bullies in her formative years. Monte was cyber-bullied, contacted via a chat service on the Internet and sent a message that frightened her.
“Because it was anonymous, it meant that now, suddenly, I didn’t trust anyone,” she said. “And that’s scary because it was just once that it happened, and I felt that pain. It was really detrimental to me.” More than 1 in 3 young people have been victims of cyber-bullying. According to PACER National Bullying Prevention Center, more than 160,000 kids miss school every day out of fear of attack or intimidation by other students.
Kids are just going to be kids, some may say. But kids are cutting themselves, failing out of school and, in extreme cases – Phoebe Prince, for example – taking their own lives in response to this so-called rite of passage.
Some schools have programs encouraging kids to get off the sidelines, stand up to bullies and support the victims. Still, we need to ask ourselves some tough questions, such as why can’t we, as a community, find a way to stop this? Is it human nature? Is it denial? What are the factors that allow this horrible childhood behavior to be viewed as acceptable? We need to find the answers to these questions – but we also need to face the answers to these questions.
17 November 2011
