Anti-Bullying National Awareness Month | Educate Yourself & Others

By Martie Hevia | Blue Beach Song™

October is Anti-Bullying National Awareness Month and I thought I would take my little platform, this blog, to share some great resources, videos, websites and information that might help you educate yourself or others on this extremely important issue.

Who Gets Bullied?

Bullying takes on as many forms as there are people who are different.

• Bullies don’t care if you are black, white, red, brown or purple.
• Bully’s don’t care if you are gay or straight or bisexual.
• Bullies don’t care if you are skinny or fat or somewhere in between.
• Bullies don’t care if you are a girl or a boy, a man or a woman.
• Bullies don’t care if you are at school, at work, or at home.
• Bullies don’t care if you are rich or poor or middle class.
• Bullies don’t care if you have blond hair and blue eyes, or brown hair and brown eyes.
• Bullies don’t care if you are beautiful, talented, kind, vulnerable, sick, smart or not.

In truth, bullies don’t care who you are and who you are is not why they bully you; they bully you because of who they are.

Bullies are equal-opportunity abusers. And they won’t stop until you stand up to them and stand up for others.

BULLY DEFINITION:
Bul-ly, noun \ˈbu̇-lē\ – (1) archaic: sweetheart; fine chap; (2) modern: a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people. [Sources: Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com]

Types of Bullying

We generally tend to think of bullying as coming in two varieties, physical and verbal, but from there we can tease out a few more. There are six types of bullying currently identified as having their own unique characteristics:

Why Do Kids Bully?

There are probably about as many reasons for bullying as there are bullies themselves, but there are a few factors that come up frequently when trying to answer the question as to why kids bully:

Myths About Bullies & Victims

Society has certain perceptions about bullies and their victims, often perpetuated on television and in movies. These perceptions are often myths, unsupported by the data. Here are a few:

Adults Get Bullied, Too

Some people think that kids and teenagers are the exclusive targets of bullies, but adults get bullied, as well, sometimes at home, but more often at work. Whether it’s your supervisor or colleague or customer, there are ways to deal with adult bullies. If you need some resources, check the Workplace Bullying Institute website and help raise awareness during the third week in October, which is Freedom from Workplace Bullies Week, after all, everyone deserves a safe, healthy workplace.

Freedom from Workplace Bullies

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Bullying is a systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction that jeopardizes your health, your career, the job you once loved. Bullying is a non-physical, non-homicidal form of violence. Because it is abusive it causes both emotional and stress-related physical harm. Freedom from Bullies Week is a chance to break through the shame and silence surrounding bullying. It is a week to be daring and bold. The power of workplace bullying is its ability to stay hidden in plain view. Make every workplace safe and take a stand against workplace bullying! [Source URL: http://www.workplacebullying.org/freedom-week/%5D

One form of workplace bullying received some national attention in the last couple of days. We have been hearing about Jennifer Livingston, an anchor/reporter at WKBT-TV in La Crosse, Wisconsin, who took to the airwaves to respond to a man who had emailed her to say she was overweight and hence not a “suitable role model” for little girls. As the mother of three little girls, whom she says she has always taught to stand up to bullies, she decided to be a good role model to them and stand up to the man by whom she felt bullied.

Another example of workplace bullying that was widely covered by the media and touched the hearts of millions, was the bullying of a 68-year-old bus monitor, Karen Klein.

As you will see in the video filmed by one of the bullies, Mrs. Klein endured repeated daily verbal assaults by a group of middle-school students on the school bus.

If an adult can be brought to tears by school bullies, one can only imagine the kind of bullying that other kids across this country endure everyday on their school bus rides to and from school, without the benefit of bus monitors. Most of these bullied children endure this kind of torture silently, afraid to tell anyone for fear of greater retribution by the bullies and the bullies’ friends.

It is time we all do something to eradicate bullying in all its ugly forms. Take a personal pledge to stand up to bullies and stand up for others. The worst thing we can do is to do nothing.

Did You Know… Facts & Statistics

ANTI-BULLYING CALENDAR

ANTI-BULLYING RESOURCES

Martie Hevia © 2012 | All Rights Reserved