We humans may have found a vaccine for Polio, landed a man on the moon and invented the Twinkie, but we sure have a long way to go in getting a handle on school bullying, don’t you think? Just like our parents did many years ago, modern parents still (unless we are rabid helicopter parents) just shrug our shoulders and say, “That’s human nature” and tell our kids to “stand tall” if they are teased/bullied. More phrases in the time-worn parent anti-bullying arsenal include “Be tough”, “Walk away”, and “Laugh it off”. I’ve used that advice and given that advice—growing up, I was teased relentlessly about being short, and my youngest child has faced the same taunts for years. I once had a “friend” who convinced the entire class not to speak to me for several days; my youngest has a “friend” who routinely informs her (in front of others) that she’s the worst dressed in the whole class. I tell her she shouldn’t be friends with people who treat her badly and that there will always be people who find fun in putting down others. But is it really “normal” to have bullies? Aren’t we hurting both the perpetrators and victims by not showing them another way?
Oh, sure, many schools (including my daughter’s) give anti-bullying lessons taught by a counselor and instituted a “no-bullying” policy a decade ago (kids are supposed to tell their teacher if they’ve been bullied), but that has worked about as great as the “This is A Gun Free Zone” sign posted near the carpool lanes. Bullying still continues, and the school once went on lock down when a crazed man roamed the neighborhood with a rifle. Kids, of course, feel that if they tell a teacher that they’ve been bullied, they’ll be labeled a tattletale and bullied further, and those who have gone ahead and come forward are often intimidated by the fact that they have to immediately miss valuable class time while they’re called to the counselor’s office for a face-to-face with the perpetrator, a “let’s all talk about our feelings” session. Not comfortable at all. And if a parent decides to “go the other route” and talk to the perpetrator’s parents, you always run the risk that you will encounter a parent who gets defensive, or over-reacts and over-punishes their child, or who puts the blame back on your own child. Not worth the time or trouble.
But the “engineer” in me says some kind of solution/prevention/intervention has got to be worth it, because the playing field has recently been taken to a whole new level thanks to the misuse of the Internet (and the glorification of that misuse in popular movies). Before, when we told our kids to just “walk away”, or ignore hurtful words, they could, but now bullying can follow them right into their homes, even their cars, thanks to hateful texting, webcams and Facebook “polls”, where a kid posts someone’s photo and then asks everyone to “weigh in”. And suddenly, zillions of people are laughing and taunting you rather than just the 20 or so in your classroom. Combine that magnitude of embarrassment with the typical low self-esteem present in many kids/teens and tragedy is inevitable. The college student who recently jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge is just the latest of many suicides connected to Internet bullying.
As I pondered this yesterday, I remembered hearing a presentation last year by Jill Darling, the director of student assistance programs for our school district. Richardson ISD was the first district in the U.S. to try out an anti-bullying program a couple years ago at a few schools, a program that had started in England, and Jill told of “amazing” results at the pilot schools. Jill was “on fire” for it. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and I remember how she said it was building bridges not only between peers but cross-generational as well, between grades. I dug out my notes and looked up the program online (click here to see what I found). Called R time, at first glance it looks like just another typical anti-bullying curriculum. But a quote from a child participant, listed on the R time UK website, caught my eye: “Thanks to R time, I now have friends I don’t even like!” I called Jill to see if the program was still going, and how it’s doing.
Not only is R time going well in our district, but it’s catching on in several more—31 districts and 144 schools participate in Texas at present count, and a Midwest contingent is starting as well. R time’s secret may lie in the fact that it really doesn’t talk about bullying much—it focuses more on simply getting along, and has kids pair off and discuss random topics. For elementary kids, the question might be “What would you do if you couldn’t use shampoo or a hairbrush for a week?” For junior high kids, it might be, “What would you do if you discovered a boyfriend/girlfriend was seeing someone else behind your back?” (Suddenly I’m reminded of The Ungame —anyone remember that blast from the 70’s?) Jill said when teachers and staff get trained and really take it to heart, the results are good—principals, for example, compare the number of students disciplined for bullying issues pre- R time and post R time, and the decrease is dramatic. Children tell her of becoming friends with people who had been their enemies for years. Jill told me that the Dallas Morning News recently printed not one but two articles about R time (we were on vacation when they were published): one in which reporter Jeffrey Weiss visited an R time classroom; and a post from columnist Jacque Floyd. Jeffrey’s article is full of positive statistics; Jacque describes R time as “No finger-wagging lectures, no corny and marginally embarrassing caring-and- sharing exercises, no expensive materials – just informal random pairings of kids, with a little friendly get-to-know-you time governed by a straightforward set of behavior rules… instead of a well-meaning-but- overbearing mandate to be nice, it creates the low-pressure opportunity for nice to occur.”
I think R time sounds like good news. It may not be a cure-all, but it’s the only thing I’ve seen address the problem with any measurable amount of success. I hope my daughter’s school is next on the list to try it out, because I know the 6th grade girls could use it. Right now. she has been coming home every day with tales of betrayal and backstabbing, and I’m wondering how anyone can learn math, science or anything else with all that drama going on. Monday, her “friend” said to her, in front of others, “How much did your mom pay you to wear that today?” and Tuesday, she got in the car with tears in her eyes because she’s being teased by a “friend” about not wearing a bra yet. And all I could offer was, just don’t be friends with people who treat you badly (and be very, very glad you don’t have to wear a bra yet…).