At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers)

Unfortunately, far too many kids in this country never see a pediatrician because their parents don't have health insurance.

Schools should really be taking the initiative on this. But most parents don't care. Some even raise their kids to be bullies on purpose.

I was afraid to go to school between ages 9 and 14 because I was severely bullied. Even now, in my late 50s, I get flashbacks if I happen to think it.

Because I wanted to help other kids avoid what I went through, I used to present in-school anti-bullying, anti-child abuse workshops in our county for a program called CAP (Center for Assault Prevention). http://www.internationalcap.org/ It seems to be fairly effective. But until our society overwhelmingly decides that bullying is unacceptable, it's going to continue. It needs to be approached the same way that cigarette smoking was -- an all-out, continuing effort.

I plan on using it with my school district.

"Next month, the American Academy of Pediatrics will publish the new version of an official policy statement on the pediatrician’s role in preventing youth violence. For the first time, it will have a section on bullying — including a recommendation that schools adopt a prevention model developed by Dan Olweus, a research professor of psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway, who first began studying the phenomenon of school bullying in Scandinavia in the 1970s. The programs, he said, “work at the school level and the classroom level and at the individual level; they combine preventive programs and directly addressing children who are involved or identified as bullies or victims or both.”"