Bullying Podcast Episode

I see the human nature of kids being mean, and what that looks like, Matt, as it unfolds. And for lots of different reasons, kids might be mean or act a certain way, or they’re trying to connect in that way. So, that is always at play. Hello and welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services.

Excellent always to have you along. Craig Stickling is with me. Thank you, Matt. Our on the ground resident schoolteacher and counselor. We’re going to talk about bullying today, Craig, and this has got to be a very relevant topic for you and something that you, I’m sure, have a lot of perspective about.

And certainly, the topic of bullying is popular right now, popular in the sense that it’s on our radar, the word is and what we mean by that. But I would love to probe your insights on this issue, but also your experience with it as well. So, thanks for being here. Glad to be here, Matt. Let’s start right off with the word bully, because that no doubt conjures up all kinds of thoughts, right?

To somebody they might start shivering because they remember that locker room situation. Another one might be on the other side of that. Start there. What is bullying? Before we look at the word, and maybe talk a little bit about that, we look at the context of the word. So how were we created? Were we created for isolation or conflict, or were we created for relation and connection and being drawn, right?

And the Word speaks into that so clearly. You look at this issue, this topic of bullying and what’s going on behind the scenes or what’s going on in the hearts and minds of kids. And people that struggle with this really reflect our created being, right? There’s this desire to be connected, and then what happens when it doesn’t work?

And we know that Cain and Abel showed us very quickly there can be dynamics in what we do with this situation. Desire to be connected, but also a desire to rule. And now I might be getting ahead of my skis a little bit and presuming some things about what bullying means.

Yeah. And maybe if this is taken sideways, it comes out in inappropriate ways. Yeah. And how do we grow in that, right? And how do we grow as young kids and even as little kids, and we see those dynamics and what does it look like now? So, yeah, we’ll start with just a definition. And I want to start off with tempering the definition as the topic of bullying.

And there’s a lot of attention, especially the last 25 years has really come up on our radar and very heavily with what the schools need to be doing and how we need to be responding. There are some who will temper the word that says we’re at a point where we’ve almost overused the word. And we’ve created so much narrative around it that really, we’ve almost created a meaningless word with so many different applications and thoughts that it almost doesn’t have use anymore.

There are some schools of thought. There are some who are in this field who say what we call bullying isn’t necessarily the right word. You know, if someone is physically pushing, assaulting, or injuring someone. That’s assault and battery. That’s a crime. You know, if someone steals your stuff or damages your school supplies, that’s not bullying.

That’s vandalism and theft, and that’s actually against the law. If someone posts things or says things about you online or spreads rumors about you with an intent and a malicious intent to hurt you, that’s not really bullying. That’s actually slander and libel, and that’s actually against the law.

So, there’s this range that says we’ve almost taken bullying, and we’ve created this catch all phrase and yet there’s actually a lot of things when you break down some of the behaviors that go with that. That’s really fascinating and really important too that we use words correctly or else they grow a life of their own.

And that description makes more sense with 25-year-olds out on the street. It’s a little bit harder when you’re talking about five-year-olds or 12-year-olds. And so, when we look at the standard definition that most experts use or discuss, they say that bullying involves an ongoing aggressive behavior intended to cause harm or distress in a relationship where there is an imbalance of power, either physical or otherwise.

So, there are three components to it. There’s aggressive behavior. There is a power player and imbalance. And then there’s also the time issue of it’s repeated at some degree. Okay. That’s really helpful. How long have you been in the public schools? 30 years. My guess is while bullying has been present from day one, and even been on your radar, I’m guessing it has changed at some level.

How has it changed? It’s changed in a couple of different ways. One has been our response, and in an appropriate way. You know, I’m old enough to be able to say there are sometimes things that happen in the school or the classroom or the neighborhood that adults just blew off or were like, you know what, kids will be kids and there were some very harmful things done or allowed to be done just in the name of kids being kids that were very, very wrong.

And there was a lack of responsibility and supervision in that. And so, there was definitely a need to step into some of that. I greatly appreciate that. My heart aches for the kids who just somehow find themselves on the hard end of relationships or classroom or school order or pecking orders and you know, they’re nice kids and sometimes they just don’t get treated well.

And to be able to have an awareness and a radar of that, I think is important. Yeah. So, I’ve seen that grow and we need to pay attention to this in a wiser way and I’ve appreciated that. So, growing awareness. Yeah. But to your point, not everybody responds the same way either. Yeah. What one kid is resilient to, the other one is wounded by.

What one grows from, the other one is hurt by. Am I right about that? Yeah, absolutely. You very much see bullying at play on the ground floor, don’t you? I see the human nature of kids being mean and what that looks like, Matt, as it unfolds. And for lots of different reasons, kids might be mean or act a certain way or they’re trying to connect in that way.

So that is always at play. I think something to remember too is mean behavior can fall into different categories. We can think of the physical hitting, pushing, shoving, you know, hey, I’m going to steal your lunch money or give me this and that intimidating physical threatening piece that occurs. We can see the verbal that gets into the words that the name calling sometimes racial slurs or derogatory terms, making fun of someone for a physical element or something.

That’s a pretty common understood one. Once I get a little tougher is the social isolating or ostracizing. You better not sit with so and so today or… And so you see that and then we get into cyber bullying which you talked about. What’s changed the dynamic of that the last 15 years has really allowed bullying almost to have like this extra lane on the interstate That it can just take any situation and make it go so much faster and so much farther than what was possible 15 years ago.

What does the fallout of it look like? I’m thinking of what your office must look like. What are you seeing with those that are on the short end of the stick of is child at? How’s the child respond to things? How does the child process things?

And for some, it would just be straight a question of why. What is wrong with me? Why do kids treat me this way? So, there’s an internal question going on. Yeah, where do they go from there? Well, you look outside and if those outside pieces don’t agree, or they don’t make sense, then they go back and they blame themselves, right?

So then there must be something wrong with me. If these kids are calling me this or that, or they’re making fun of me for this, right? And I can share or say, well, let’s look at the source. This kid is always saying mean things in there. And sometimes kids will believe and be okay with that.

But if they don’t or they don’t have enough other support systems, then it’s a pretty quick path to going, well, there must be something wrong with me and that’s such a hard place. I would imagine you’ve got some intuition. You’re going to have a new batch of kids here pretty soon. Are you able to pick out and say, that person will likely be bullied, or that person is a likely bully.

I mean, are you able to know what you see, know what you’re looking at over the years? You have learned. Yeah, certain patterns repeat, and it falls into two categories, right? There’s always a child who might have a distinct physical feature, right? And it’s not always a negative one. Yeah, maybe they’re short, a certain height there or a certain body type or have a certain distinguishing feature.

And so that’s always to me like fish in the barrel for immature adolescents. That’s easy to make some type of statement or comment about that. And then for them to reflect on why I am bullied and come to that particular characteristic, which they may or may not be able to change, whether it be intellectual or whether it be physical.

Yeah. That must be a paralyzing place to get to. It is frustrating for sure. Right.  And they maybe haven’t had enough life experiences to be able to say, okay, other parts of my life will balance that out, right? And so, when it’s all based on a physical feature or an academic feature or am I good at this sport feature, when all this is on that, that’s a hard place to be.

What have you seen about kids that weather it well and kids who don’t weather it well? The researchers have tried to come up with the best term for that, and they’ve parked on the word resilient, and you’ve mentioned that before already, Matt, some kids that have this resiliency, and sometimes that resiliency is just who they are, and they just have this approach to be able to let it roll off like water of a duck’s back. They just have this unique way of being like, yeah, well, I don’t let that bother me and they can just somehow find a way to move on and not be impacted.

There are other kids who have had experiences that have taught them, and they’ve learned from those experiences. Okay, I’ve got a few tricks now in my bag and I know what to do. So, you see some kids that have that piece as well and the resiliency part. Others, they just learn to kind of step out of the socialization rat race and they kind of go, you know what, I’m here. I’m going to go to school. If I got a friend that I can have lunch with, it’s going to be a good day, and I can just get through this day because it’s leading me to something else. So, they have a more forward-thinking perspective, and they can recognize that, yeah, these may not be the best years of my life. And so, I’m not selling the farm. I’m not hoping to have everything happen right now. I understand that this is a step. And so there we have that maturity to see ahead. So, that sometimes is a strength to some kids as well. And I would imagine that there are some that do the wrong thing. They handle it the wrong way.

Yeah. And the tangle in that, Matt, is I can, from my old person’s highchair say oh, that behavior that you’re doing right now, that is not going to be helpful to you. But where they’re at and in their problem-solving mind, they’re saying, this is how I’m going to fix this. This group of kids who make fun of me for whatever and are always giving me a hard time and always messing with me. Even though that’s happened for the first 97 days, on day 98, I’m going to go right back up to them again, and I’m going to step into the middle of that group, and I’m going to show them that I’m really a pretty cool kid. So, some of those kids really struggle with learning that and acknowledging that.

You know what? I might just need to leave that group alone. Well, it seems to me that there is an objective that a bully has that brings about submission, right? And so, for that child or person who resists the submissions that I’m not going to give them that, they meet it with aggression or contrary feedback, which probably makes it worse, but there is something interesting there, I think.

Maybe you correct me that bullying does look for defeat or submission to my size or my power or my intellect or whatnot. Yeah, right. Yeah, there’s a gentleman named Brooks Gibbs, and he does a lot with resiliency education and working in this field, and he’s talked about that mean kids act that way for basically three reasons.

And one of those reasons you mentioned, you just hit right on the head. And that is control. I want to control people. I want to exert my way over them. I want to see how far I can get them to go or how much I can push the envelope with them. And I just like to see them react. I’m playing this game. And I’m navigating this game. And guess what? I really don’t care about the kid. They’re not like they’re a friend of mine. It doesn’t matter. I really don’t care about them. And could you say it’s not even personal? Yeah, it’s not even personal. It’s just their game of the day. Like okay, I’m going to shoot baskets. I have to make the basket and for some, that control piece is part of their gig, that meanness. And that’s how it comes out to them. The other two elements of why people are often mean is one is using jokes, using humor. Humor is a very sought after currency in the adolescent model, right?

If you can make people laugh, that elevates you to a certain degree. So, how do I do that? How do I practice that? How do I banter back and forth and say things and, oh, if kids laugh because I just made fun of that one kid who no one ever talks to or they think dresses weird, and they laugh, all of a sudden, I’m like, wow, that’s some currency.

I made people laugh, and that elevates me. There’s a joking kind of piece to it, that just kidding, I’ll say all these things, but then I’ll be like, oh, just kidding, at the end, and actually, they really weren’t kidding, they were just trying to get people to laugh. I think that’s really powerful, to think of people laughing.

But as laughter, because I think you’re absolutely right, humor is currency. And if you’ve got a person who wants that currency but doesn’t have maybe the intellect to really make people laugh, you do stoop to some unreasonable lows to get laughed at. Oh, and once that becomes a competition it feeds on itself.

And then you got this group of people who keep going back and forth, right? Who can one up each other? And then that becomes very quickly, not just, oh, hey, that was funny, all of a sudden now we’re on the mean side of things because we’ve conditioned ourselves that we have to escalate it.

Yeah. And the third one to share is just hurting. And this is such an interesting piece of the human heart, isn’t it? People who are hurting about something then feel like, okay, how do I respond to that hurt? Right? This thing has happened because I don’t have good language skills or confidence to be able to talk to you face to face about it. I’m going to talk behind your back. I’m going to post something about you. I’m going to get my friends to not want to sit with you or to be with you because you hurt me. You didn’t invite me to a party or you talked to my best friend or you did something to offend or hurt me. And because I don’t know what to do with that, I’m now going to take it out by doing this type of behavior back to you.

So that’s helpful. Those three things because only one of them is really malicious. That’s the third category. The other two aren’t. And I think that’s fascinating because I think we interpret bullying as malicious always. Yeah. But that isn’t necessarily the case. But this idea that, well, as the saying goes, hurting people, hurt people.

Yeah. And that definitely plays out at all levels of life. What would you say then to a parent whose child is bullied? What can we do? I mean, we try to create environments where bullying doesn’t happen, but at some level I’m not sure it’s possible to airbrush out bullying among human beings.

Right. How do we help our kids be resilient to that bullying? The number one thing that we can do is create a conversation around the fact that kids have the potential to be mean. And some days it might even be you, so what are you going to do with that? But to create that conversation piece with our kid and to be able to be intentional then.

So, tell me about your class this year. How’s school in the sense of, do you see kids do this or do you see kids act like this? How do you respond? Do you have any friends who are bullied or picked on? What do you do? How do you respond to that? And so, creating that language and that conversation piece is really, really significant.

What is really hard is most kids do not want their parents to know that either they’re being bullied or that’s going on in their school. So now we’ve got this disconnect that occurs. Something that we tell kids is to tell all. But in this situation, most kids find it really, really hard to tell all.

Somewhere in the written or unwritten rules of, of life, it’s that if I tell, it’s going to come back to me twofold. And so, there’s this picture of, well, if I say something to mom, she is going to get in the car, drive up to the school, you know, drag that kid out of the cafeteria and give her two cents worth and then it’ll get worse.

Then it’ll be worse for me. So, you have that piece that’s going on. I think you have the other piece that’s like, well, if they know there’s something that’s not going well, then they’re always going to be on my case about it, and I’ll never be able to go out with my friends anymore, and so, they think in that extreme, right?

So, if I share that there might be a problem, then I’m going to lose privileges, so there’s maybe a little bit of that fear as well. And probably third, there’s a piece that just is that age, and I’m talking that young adolescent trying to become more independent. And part of becoming independent means, well, I solve my own problems.

What does it look like to come alongside them in a way that doesn’t fix the problem? That is, I’m not going in as a tirade into the school, but yet equipping my son or daughter to be resilient to that. What occurs to you in this moment as what might be some of the qualities to encourage?

Right. I think one of the places that we start, Matt, is that we pour into our kids that they are wonderfully and fearfully made by God and marvelous are his works. And that it’s their soul that needs to figure that out, right? To know right well. And so, I think we’re pouring that into our kids that God created them. They have a great purpose and worth. He’s given them talents and gifts. And part of our job is helping them with that discovery process. And because there’s always the balance to the sailboat and what keeps the sailboat upright are those things which are right and true and for our kids to be really solid in that.

So, a bad day at recess or a bad day at the girls table and I didn’t get invited to this party and a bad day of that stings and hurts is that we always have this ballast of truth that we be able to go back and affirm them in, right? So that’s our drawing them back piece, external, outside of stuff.

Sometimes we can’t always control that, but let’s go to the home of our heart, the home of our creator, and be reminded of those things that we do know are true and that gives us a starting spot anyway. No, this is really, really enlightening. You know what, as I reflect on my own growing up, I can say I was not the bully, but I wasn’t bullied either, but I sure saw a lot of it going on.

And so, there’s probably a lot in my category. What are your thoughts? You’re right. As you look at maybe the demographics of the school, that will be the largest percentage, but they’re also the most powerful group. And a group of bystanders that have united on something, have a really powerful voice.

And it’s really neat to see sometimes when the positive of that happens, you know, and you see that moving forward. I think individually, Matt, do we encourage our kids to move out of bystanders where I just watch or maybe snicker or just go to class, or do I step in somehow? And I think that’s a hard conversation, but I think it’s a powerful one to have.

We often think of the vigilante as the person who says, okay, I’m going to come roaring into this scenario between these two unbalanced powers, and I’m going to create havoc to teach a lesson here, but that’s a really small minority, and that’s really probably not very wise anyway. That’s just going to create a lot more moving parts and pieces.

But I think there’s a huge piece that is a private role that I’ve seen kids do very, very successfully later in that day or walking back in or whatever, that kid walks up and just says, hey, you know what? I saw what was happening there and that shouldn’t have happened. That kid was really being a jerk.

I want you to know that I’m sorry about that. I just wish that wouldn’t happen. If it happens again, you just come over and hang out with us. That’s a private connection, but you’ve acknowledged to that kid that you saw what happened, that they weren’t invisible, and that you were willing to be kind to them.

And I didn’t need to jump in the middle of a big thing, I didn’t need to go to the office and tell, but I just privately communicated with that kid. And some kids have shared with me, that really, really means a lot to them. You know what, as you sketched out that space, it became clear to me that it’s really the bystanders that fuel the whole thing, not too many bullies just do it for no audience at all.

There typically is an audience charged to it. What is the audience asking for? I think is a very provocative question and all of us are part of that. There’s not one of us that doesn’t apply to. What are we asking for? Those that make up the audience. Yeah, and I think this has far reaching effects in the school. Well, we don’t outgrow that in our communities, do we? We have an opportunity to call for something far different than what’s going to feed or satiate a bully. Thanks Craig so much for your insights. Thanks for the work that you’re doing in the public schools day in and day out for 30 years and ongoing.

Appreciate that. Thanks each one for listening and have a good day.