Tag: bullying

PUTTING DOWN NON-GROUP MEMBERS

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date January 20, 2014
4 Comments on PUTTING DOWN NON-GROUP MEMBERS

On this blog, I have often discussed various reasons why someone might throw insults at you, and, depending on the reason, how to maturely deal with these challenging experiences (see for example, “Insults: A Comic Strip Guide“). If John is throwing an insult at you because he is in a bad mood, just asking in a concern manner, “Is everything OK, John, you sound like something is bothering you?” might be a useful way to begin to respectfully deal with this type of situation. You might want to respond differently, however, if you see that John is insulting you because he hopes it will encourage you to make a change he thinks you need to make. In this type of situation, beginning your response by initially ignoring the insult and instead summarizing his concern could be more helpful than asking if everything is OK or making a big thing about the insult.

In earlier posts, we have discussed eight different reasons why people throw insults at others, and mature responses to deal with each of these situations. Today let’s focus on some ways to deal with situations in which you might find yourself being insulted by those in a group because they view you as a non-group member.

Putting Down Non-group Members

Many people have a desire to join together in a common cause. This can dramatically increase their own personal power. And it is one of the big reasons why playing a game like baseball can be so much fun. Hit a homer or even a ground ball that brings in the winning run, and your group is patting you on the back and cheering.

When immature people join together, however, because of their lack of empathy, they often join together to put down and humiliate non-group members–particularly if the non-group members are a minority or viewed as too powerless to defend themselves.

Sometimes we see this sort of behavior occur when a new girl starts a new school.

When someone faces these types of difficult situations, what is a respectable way to respond? No single blog post can fully answer this question, but I would like to throw out some ideas for your consideration. Let’s begin with a parable.

The Parable of Jason and Ron

As you look at the four pictures of this parable, let me add some details. When Jason says, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Ron,” he looks squarely into Ron’s eyes. Then he gives Ron a slight nod of his head and goes on his way. Throughout the interaction between Jason and Ron, Jason remains friendly, while at the same time, self-assured.

When I was in school, one day I noticed a boy handle a similar situation like Jason. The other students seemed to respect how the boy handled the teasing. So I began to rehearse this style in front of a mirror over the course of a few days. The next time one of the older students teased me, I gave it a try. It ended up working just fine.

The “Give The Teasers What They Want” Approach

Now I understand that the approach described in “The Jason and Ron Parable” might not work perfectly in every situation. Acting self-assured might actually increase the desire by group members to prove that they are powerful and the person being insulted is nothing but a pile of trash. To try to prove this, they might insult you even worse than if you said nothing, or they might even physically attack you. Because of this risk, many people faced with insults from a larger, more powerful group choose to give the teasers what they want–to feel they are more powerful than others. People using this approach, when faced by these teasers, keep their eyes down toward the ground, and try to walk away as quickly as they can without saying anything. In this way, they don’t challenge the teasers sense of power in any way.

I’ve seen people use the “Give the Teasers What They Want” approach and it sometimes works to a certain degree. The immature group members, with their lack of empathy toward others, after saying a few mean things, let the teased person walk by, and there is no more of these incidences. The group members feel that they had a little fun and the teased person gets away without any physical harm. His or her feelings might feel hurt, but this passes before too long.

I must admit that I used this approach a few times when I was young. It bothered me that I didn’t stand up for myself in a more “manly” manner, but at the same time I was glad that I got home safe.

The “Physical Attack” Approach

Now in contrast to the approach used in the “Jason and Ron Parable” and the “Give The Teasers What They Want” approach, some people have made the case that if anyone insults you, the only proper way to deal with this is to start swinging with everything you got. It doesn’t matter if you end up getting ganged up, beaten severely, or evenbeing killed, you must physically attack to maintain your dignity. Consider Mike’s story.

Mike’s Story

One day, I received a comment on my blog by a young man who recalled an incident that he had had when he was a new kid at school. “On the school bus,” he wrote, “I began to get picked on. I was not the kind of mature kid who ignored the situation and so I ended up getting into fights as a result. I’d like to preface my next statement with the following–I am not condoning fighting and do not recommend fighting as a solution to any type of verbal altercation. That being said, after showing the bullies that I’d stand up for myself, not only did the bullying come to an abrupt end, but I ended up becoming friends with several of them and seemed to garner the respect of many of the other kids on the bus. Again I’m not condoning fighting but am suggesting that in some cases a show of strength can be an effective way to resolve conflict.”

Here’s how I responded to Mike:

Hi Mike,

You are absolutely right. In some situations a kid who starts to get picked on will physically go at those doing the tormenting. The tormentors end up backing down, others end up respecting the kid who shut the tormentors up, and the kid even ends up making friends with the tormentors. This is a real possibility. Now, let’s consider other possibilities of a kid physically going at his tormentors so all of us can make an informed decision about how best to handle these types of situations.

In one case that I’m familiar with, a boy that we will call Cal, went to his dad and complained in a choked up voice of a bully picking on him on the bus. The dad, having had a very similar experience when he was young that you had, Mike, began to holler at his son. “If someone picks on you, you go at him with everything you have and that will shut him up. That’s how I handled that type of situation and it worked every time. I can’t believe you didn’t do that. Here you are crying over it. I’m ashamed of you!”

What the dad didn’t know at the time was that Cal had already witnessed another kid on the bus who was bigger and stronger than him try to do just what his dad had said to do. The bully quickly grabbed the arm of this kid, twisted it behind his back until it was excruciatingly painful. After the kid tried his best to get free, the twisted arm was twisted tighter and the kid let out a scream. The bus driver yelled to quiet down. The bully then loosened his grip on the kid, slapped him on the side of his face, and said, “If you ever start in with me again, I’ll catch you after school and you’ll really be sorry.”

Cal, seeing this happen to someone he knew was stronger than he is, became increasing depressed and when he began to talk about killing himself, he ended up in my office. Before long he blurted out all that he was going through.

Now, here’s another possible outcome of a kid going physically at bullies. The kid ends up winning the fight, or at least does enough harm to the bullies, that they settle down for the remainder of the trip. But the bullies belong to a gang, and having embarrassed the bullies on the bus, the gang decides to get revenge. The kid gets attacked and ends up with serious injuries, or even dead.

Or the bullies, seeing that they can’t get the kid to kowtow to them, end up working up their fury until they begin to get revenge by doing some things behind the kid’s back. The kid discovers his backpack has been slashed and in the crowd that is looking on, he sees the bullies smirking. Then the kid’s bike is stolen. Again the bullies have smirks on their faces. The kid tries to get even, the conflict escalates, and before long someone gets knifed or a gun explodes.

These are just some of the other outcomes that have occurred when someone has decided to physically attack bullies. Each person has to consider the situation and decide what is right.

Since writing the above reply to Mike, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, Outliers. In one of his chapters, I learned that communities that have a higher than average percentage of people who hold the attitude that the only way to deal with people being disrespectful to you is to physically attack them tend to have higher than average murder rates. Is that the type of community you wish to live in. Some of the bullets that fly by in those communities end up striking people who are not even involved in the anger arousing situation, including children. And so, I think people should think seriously about this issue.

Making a choice between which type of approach to use in any given situation requires some deep thought. I hope this post gives you some useful material as you go about deciding for yourself what makes the best sense.

——————–
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, bullied, bullies, bully, bullying, conflict management, conflict resolution, criticism, dispute management, disrespectful, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, maturity, non-group members, out groups, psychological maturity, types of criticism, wisdom

bullying Chris Christie conflict management conflict resolution criticism emotional intelligence free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum insults Name calling respect social intelligence wisdom

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE’S USE OF INSULTS

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date January 13, 2014
1 Comment on GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE’S USE OF INSULTS

In earlier posts on this blog I have advocated that it can be helpful to become familiar with five levels of maturity for responding to negative criticism and five levels of maturity for providing negative criticism (see for example Providing Negative Criticism: Five Levels of Maturity). In those posts, I have contended that when responding or providing negative criticism the use of insults tends to lower your level of maturity. Moreover, people who are less mature tend to be less liked and respected.

If the arguments that I have made in those earlier posts are accurate, how then can I explain the successful career that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has had? Here is a man who is well known to use insults when he is criticized and when he is criticizing others. Here is a man who likes to characterize his use of insults as his way of being “blunt and direct” even though a person can surely be blunt and direct without seeking to insult people. Here is a man who has managed to get himself elected as a county legislator in New Jersey’s Morris County, appointed as United States Attorney for New Jersey, elected Governor of New Jersey twice, and viewed as one of the front runners for the next U.S. presidential election. Here is a man that many people have come to admire.

By addressing this apparent paradox between my proposed levels of maturity and the success of Gov. Christie, readers will have an opportunity to come to a more refined, precise understanding of how to utilize the levels of maturity as a guide for dealing with interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

Explaining the Paradox

First of all, as I have explained in earlier posts, the five levels of maturity for responding or providing negative criticism are most relevant to your interpersonal relationships and your intrapersonal relationships. As I define these terms, your interpersonal relationships are your interactions with people with whom you have direct, face to face interactions on an ongoing basis; your intrapersonal relationships involve interactions that you have with yourself.

The relationship that Gov. Christie has with his voters is best viewed as an intergroup relationship, rather than either an interpersonal or intrapersonal relationship. This intergroup relationship involves the group of people who might potentially vote for him, the group of people who have a vested interest in getting the governor elected, and the groups of people who are working to get someone else elected. Although the five levels of maturity are relevant in intergroup relationships, other issues often become more important.

In an interpersonal relationship, if you attempt to insult the person whom you are interacting with, that person might insult you back and the interaction can escalate into violence. When we see Gov. Christie seeking to insult someone, he almost always has a group of supporters standing behind him and a team of armed security personnel well trained to intervene if an insulted party makes any moves at all that can be viewed as violent. Under this set of circumstances, it is far safer to play the part of a tough guy who doesn’t take any crap from anyone than if you, personally, seek to insult someone with whom you have an interpersonal relationship.

Here’s another difference between what typically happens during your interpersonal relationships and the intergroup interactions that involve the governor. When someone directly seeks to insult you, unless you are well trained in handling this in a peaceful manner, you are likely to take the insult personally. The emotions that arise in this situation are more likely to be stronger than if you see on TV, or in a large arena, the governor throwing insults at someone you are not likely to personally know.

The governor, moreover, is not seeking to develop a sound interpersonal relationship with you. He is, instead, seeking your vote. He knows very well that not everyone is going to vote for him. If he angers 49 percent of voters, but 51 percent end up voting for him, he’s achieved his goal. In the last election, the governor managed to get 60% of the vote and not only did this mean that he was reelected, but the media repeatedly described his win as a landslide victory. This victory meant that 40% of the voters voted for someone else. Now, when it comes to interpersonal relationships, if you act in a manner that leads to 4 people out of 10 not liking you, this can lead to far more direct problems for you then if 4 out of 10 people don’t vote for you in a statewide election. Those who don’t like you can begin to say things behind your back to people who actually personally interact with you. Some of what get says can be untrue and very unfair. You may find that when people that you like have parties, you no longer get invited. When you used to be invited to go bowling, now someone else is getting invited. These types of consequences have far more direct effects on your personal life than anything that is likely to happen as a result of a New Jersey election.

When people decide on who to vote for, they consider many issues, not just whether or not the candidate insults anyone. When Gov. Christie insults someone, many voters are apt to say to themselves, he isn’t doing anything different than all the other politicians. They therefore decide to choose a candidate based on other issues. If some voters recognize that Governor Christie insults others a bit more than other candidates, they may feel that his stand on keeping taxes low is a far more important issue for them.

Gov. Christie’s popularity, in my opinion, is largely based on his positions on the issues and, indeed, on some of his personal characteristics. Although the media plays up, and repeatedly show instances in which he insults people, if you really follow his career, you find that the vast majority of the time he conducts himself in a manner very consistent with the highest levels of maturity. When someone criticizes him, most often he listens without getting defensive, clearly shows that he understands the criticism, and when he agrees with the criticism, he says so. When he disagrees, in a warm and friendly style he very articulately explains why he disagrees. People who have not made up their minds on a particular issue have an opportunity to see his take on the issue and a significant amount of undecided voters end up becoming convinced that the governor’s position is correct.

Gov. Christie has demonstrated that he knows how, when he is criticized or when he criticizes others, to act in the most mature manner. When he does choose to throw an insult at someone, in the vast majority of cases he is very careful to do so when it is unlikely to harm him politically. You can be sure that when he was the United States Attorney for New Jersey, any time he disagreed with one of the judges involved in a case he was working on he never chose to directly insult the judge. If he had, his career would have taken a tailspin.

The governor knows full well that there are voters in New Jersey who will never vote for him no matter what he says. And so, when he chooses to insult someone, it is almost always directed at that group of people or the positions that they tend to believe in. By doing so, his supporters come to see him as a leader who will be a strong defender of the positions they hold dear.

In recent events involving some lane closings on the George Washington Bridge into New York City that created gridlock traffic in Fort Lee, New Jersey, Gov. Christie began to use his style of insults in a very different manner than I had become accustomed to, and it has landed him in a heap of trouble. The lane closings appeared to some reporters as a “get back” strategy designed to punish someone who didn’t support Gov. Christie in his latest run for reelection. When questioned about this, the governor became sarcastic, and he sought to insult the questioners, saying they were “obsessing” over a minor issue, and claiming that the questioners must “having nothing else to do.”

This incident does demonstrate that using the most mature levels of dealing with criticism can be important even in the political arena. If the governor, when he was being criticized for how he was handling the bridge lane closings incident, instead of responding with insults, replied in a manner consistent with a 4 or 5 level of maturity, his response would have looked something like this:

“I understand your concern. Those lane closings led to thousands of people being inconvenienced for several days. If it was one of my kids who ended up missing two hours of school for no apparent good reason, I would have been very upset, and as someone who cares about my fellow New Jersey citizens, I am very upset. Making this situation worse was that police and ambulances had difficulty getting to where they were needed. This is a very serious issue, and I am bound and determined to get to the bottom of what happened.”

Such a response would have shown the questioner and all that listened in that he shared their concerns and had empathy for those who were involved in the mess. Because of his more immature responses, a few days ago, after it became more and more apparent that his administration was indeed involved in a “get back” scheme, the governor had to apologize for his insulting actions. In his nearly two hours of addressing the criticism in a national televised press hearing, the governor did not even once attempt to insult those who were publicly criticizing him as they asked their questions. Instead, the governor modeled the most mature levels of responding to criticism. Will it be enough to overcome all that he created when he responded at the lowest levels? We’ll have to wait and see.

———————
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE

Tags anger, bully, bullying, Chris Christie, conflict management, criticism, disrespectful, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, interpersonal relationships, maturity levels, respect, wisdom

anger Bullied bullying conflict management conflict resolution criticism emotional intelligence free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum insults interpersonal conflicts MATURITY Name calling negative criticism playful teasing taunting teasing types of criticism

THE ART OF PLAYFUL TEASING

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date December 19, 2013
5 Comments on THE ART OF PLAYFUL TEASING

Young group of men who are bullying one of them.

Teasing is a game sometimes known as bantering, joshing, crackin’, rankin’, playing the dozens, and trash talk. You are judged in part on the quality of your insults and also how well you keep your cool on being insulted.

Even the most mature people may like to play the teasing game, for they enjoy the duel of wits and the occasional humorous comeback.

MATURE VERSUS IMMATURE TEASING

Mature people are distinguished from immature people in this game by their lack of desire to hurt somebody in this game. Their empathy helps them to realize that the smiles and the lighthearted tone they try to set throughout the game sometimes mask real tensions. Thus, they keep their senses tuned to the subtleties of the repartee, and know when to back off when things begin to get too serious.

Less mature people, partly because of their lower levels of empathy, may think that the more awful they can make someone feel during this game, the better they are at it. When the criticizers have themselves been humiliated by other immature people, they may come to be even more motivated to humiliate others as a way to take out their own pain on others.

IS PLAYFUL TEASING REALLY WHAT IS GOING ON?

If you find that you are being criticized and it doesn’t seem to be motivated by a desire to get you to improve, and you’re not sure what else may be the reason, my advice is to first theorize that it’s just some playful teasing. If the criticism is provided with a smile, or by someone you know who likes to tease in a friendly way, you can be pretty sure that it is just for fun. Then, if you reply with a smile and a comment such as, “That’s a good one,” it shows that you can take a little teasing without getting defensive. If you want to take the game a little further, you can throw a friendly insult right back, like “Same to you, fellow.” When you’ve had enough of the game, smiling and giving the other player a pat on the back can be a good way to draw the game to an end.

Sometimes you are not sure if playful teasing is the name of the game. Then you have to be careful about throwing insults back at the insulter. If it turns out that the criticizer’s comments are not meant to be playful teasing, throwing back insults might make the situation worse. Here are some ideas that permit you to play along while providing you time to figure out what’s really going on.

After the first insult, consider responding in a kidding around way by crying, “OH YEAH!?” As you do this, pretend, in an obviously joking around way, that you have become defensive at the insulter’s comment. But then follow up your fake outrage with a broad smile. This shows that you can play along with the insult while, at the same time, you can take a joke.

If the insulter again insults you in a manner that still leaves you uncertain if the person is just teasing, consider saying the following. “It looks like you have some more missiles to send my way. Okay, hit me with your best shots. I already know that you think my nose is too big and my mother is a fool, so there’s no need to bother with those. Go ahead. I can take it.”

Then, if the insults continue, cry out, “Look out! Incoming torpedoes! Mayday! Mayday! I’m going down! I’m sinking! I’m sinking!” Then fall to your knees, and cover up your ears.

All of this allows you to continue to play along without throwing insults back at a criticizer who may not be playing the teasing game. By the time you fall to your knees, if you still aren’t clear about what is going on, get back up and try saying in a concerned, caring way, “Listen, at first I thought you were joking around. Now I’m not so sure. Is everything okay?”

This often leads to the insulter revealing what is actually motivating this behavior. But if the insulter walks away, and then begins to insult you on another occasion, it’s time to go down the list of other desires that motivate criticism (see HERE).

If you find that the person, or the group of people teasing you are playing the game of teasing in the immature manner—that is, just trying to make you feel as awful as possible—what can you do? I suggest that you just give a quick nod at the comment and then get as far away as possible. Then do your best to stay away from such people.

Now, I certainly realize it is not always easy to avoid a person or a group. Students or bus monitors who ride the school bus are pretty much forced to be confined with a certain set of students for a period of time a couple of times each day. Or the group you want to avoid might be in your classes. As you leave the class you might be stuck walking down the hall with the criticizers. In such cases, when you feel that you have reached your limit of dealing with the put downs, sometimes the following approach is worth a try.

To begin, this approach only requires that you learn to say two words—Please, enough. That’s the easy part. For some, learning how to say these words is the hard part of this strategy.

To use this technique, after two or three insults, say, in a very serious way, rather softly, but loud enough to be clearly heard, “Please.” Then pause for about three seconds while looking firmly into the eyes of each person who has been teasing you. Than say, “e” using the long “e” sound. Then, after another second, say, “nough!” When you look into the eyes of each of the name callers, you are NOT to glare at them in a threatening manner, with your eyebrows pressed to the middle of your forehead. Rather, you are seeking to be firm and very, very, serious.

If immediately after you finish saying this, somebody begins to insult you again, repeat the same words in a similar manner, but this time say it distinctly louder, though just short of shouting. At this point you are seeking to communicate that dire consequences are at hand. You must be firm and look squarely into the eyes of each insulter once again. Then you are to remain very serious while staring either out the school bus’s window or straight ahead where you are walking, but not at any one of the criticizers. You are to remain silent, without talking to anyone, for the remainder of the period you are stuck together, looking the whole time like you are through fooling around and enough is enough!

When the end of the time period that you are stuck together comes, immediately take your stuff and hurry away from the group continuing to look like you are very much annoyed.

The next time you see them, again, turn very serious and silent. If the group members don’t bother you, after a few minutes you can slowly begin to reduce the tension you have created. If the group members again insult you at any time, be silent and serious while again staring out the window or, if you are walking, straight ahead.

The game of immature name calling is kind of like a tennis game. In tennis, if someone hits the ball over the net to you and you refuse to hit it back, people will stop playing with you. Similarly, if someone insults you and you remain silent, often the insulter will find the game too boring to continue.

Although the style I want you to consider comes fairly easy to some, others must learn it with someone who can model the right tone and expression. Some people I worked with over the years found it hard not to put a smirk on their face after they said, “Please, enough!” Some came off as embarrassed while they carried out the technique. If you are not sure how you look while carrying out each step, observe yourself in a mirror. Also run through a role play with a couple of friends or family members and ask them if it looks right to them. Better yet, find out who directs plays at your school. Find out the director’s office hours, and go and explain what you want to learn.

I encourage you to avoid becoming discouraged if you end up botching the performance the first few times you try this during practice sessions. I’ve worked with students that at first kept cracking up throughout the process. Every one of them eventually learned to effectively utilize this technique. Five sessions, each lasting about fifteen minutes, can usually get a shy guy to put together an academy award winning performance.

There are times when those who are doing the teasing are being so cruel and relentless, that the wisest course of action is to inform authorities such as a school principal and the police. This may take courage, but keep in mind that if you remain silent, not only will you continue to be cruelly treated, but so too will others.

Tags anger, bullied, bullies, bully, bullying, conflict management, conflict resolution, criticism, dispute management, disrespectful, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, playful teasing, respect, threats, types of criticism

anger bullying conflict management conflict resolution free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum insults interpersonal conflicts Mike Tomlin N.F.L. pranks respect Richard Incognito Ryan Tannehill teasing threats Troy Polamalu

The NFL and Bullying: How to Change the Culture

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date November 10, 2013
No Comments on The NFL and Bullying: How to Change the Culture

This is my third “NFL Bullying” post since the topic splashed all over the national media this past Monday. The first (“The N.F.L. Culture and Bullying“) presents the theory that one reason why bullying is sometimes viewed as acceptable is the belief that it can increase motivation to reach a level of excellence not achievable without bullying.

Whereas there may indeed be legitimate examples of some people achieving more in some valued area than they would have because of some insult, there are many arguments that insults are far more likely to be harmful rather than helpful. From my own observations, insults most often just lead to a nasty exchange and wasted energy. Moreover, some talented people who might have made an excellent contribution to a team may end up quitting altogether rather than putting up with what they feel is abuse.

Off the football field, recent research has found that harsh verbal discipline by parents led to increases in teenage depression and more behavior problems, including fighting with peers, trouble in school and lying to parents (see Longitudinal Links Between Fathers’ and Mothers’ Harsh Verbal Discipline and Adolescents’ Conduct Problems and Depressive Symptoms).

I am therefore not convinced that people, to be fully motivated, need to be insulted. In the NFL, players know that if they do well their records will show this. Millions of dollars help to motivate. Lack of effort will lead to being cut from the team. When players do well they are cheered by millions and receive more financially rewarding sponsor deals. The players want to do well not only for themselves but for their teammates and to be respected as a skillful player by their fellow professional football players. The coaching team is hired to demonstrate passion for excellence, and they convey this attitude through modeling. With these types of motivators, hazing, with its likelihood of causing more harm then good, makes little sense.

My second post on this topic (N.F.L. Bullying: The Real Reason For It) argued that whereas part of the reason for the hazing of rookies in the NFL is the belief that it can challenge players to perform better, the larger reason has to do, in my opinion, with a completely different dynamic. I expressed this dynamic as follows:

“Veterans recognize that the rookies are after their jobs. When Joe Quarterback sees a fresh new quarterback on the team, he says to himself, After all my hard work and effort and all of the damaging blows that I’ve taken for the team, now this young son-of-a bitch wants to take my job.”

This underlying anger is the real fuel igniting the bullying. I likened what the bullies of the NFL are doing to what white racist southerners did to blacks in the south.

Now I do want to make it clear that I certainly don’t have enough information to say if any specific person involved in the Incognito-Martin incident is guilty of doing anything wrong. But I personally think there is ample evidence that there is currently too much bullying going on in the NFL, and we should go ahead and start discussing ways to change the culture. Why do I believe this?

One reason is the words used by Ryan Tannehill, QB for the Miami Dolphins, while defending his teammate, Richie Incognito, who is being accused of bullying. “Does he [Incognito] like to give guys a hard time?” said Tannehill. “Yes. Does he like to pester guys and have fun? Yes. But he brought a lot of laughter and a lot of cohesiveness.” (Quoted in Bloomberg Press in article titled, “NFL Bullying Accusation Forces Teams to Look at Own Locker Rooms“).

These kinds of statements even from someone trying to defend Incognito supports my contention that it is time to start thinking about changing the NFL culture. A much better culture would impart to the players a clear understanding that there are far better ways to bring cohesiveness to a team than giving teammates a hard time and pestering them and that laughing about such behavior doesn’t make it excusable. I’m not alone.

Jason Reid, a writer for the Washington Post wrote a column on this topic titled, “Miami Dolphins Blacks’ Support for Richie Incognito in NFL Bullying Affair is Troubling.”

Here’s what Reid had to say:

“Miami Dolphins players don’t get it. Their support of suspended guard Richie Incognito – even after they learned he used a racial slur in a threatening voice mail left for biracial linemate Jonathan Martin – is among many troubling aspects of the bullying controversy that has engulfed the NFL franchise.

But for me, what’s most disturbing is that several misguided African- American Dolphins players – Mike Wallace, Mike Pouncey, Brent Grimes and Michael Egnew have been among Incognito’s most vocal defenders – identify more closely with Martin’s alleged tormentor than they do with Martin. Their support for Incognito shows the wrongheaded thinking that can arise from the locker-room culture and long-standing beliefs in the African American community about what behavior is socially acceptable for blacks.”

IF indeed there is too much bullying going on in the NFL, such verbal statements can be one way to change its culture.

There is some hope that the culture can indeed be changed. According to a recent USA Today report, at least one NFL team has already managed to do this at least for one team–the Pittsburgh Steelers. There we learn that:

The attention hazing and bullying have received this week surprises Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu. Having only played for one organization his entire 11-year career, Polamalu says he’s never seen any young players deal with anything even resembling hazing.

“Coach Tomlin has always said that if you are willing to help us win than you’re part of our family,” Polamalu said. “Whenever anybody young or new comes into here, we always have open arms and are willing to help them get used to their professional lives, whether it’s getting a car or giving them some change before they start getting paid.”

In another report, this one from ESPN, Polamalu said that the Steelers’ ethos starts at the top with chairman emeritus Dan Rooney and president Art Rooney II.

“They’ve really instilled a family environment that’s permeated our locker room so whenever a rookie comes in we accept them with open arms. We teach them the best way we know on how to be professional, how to take care of your body, how to train, how to learn the defense, the offense, whatever it may be.”

In the same article, Steelers’ coach Mike Tomlin is quoted as saying:

“We take a simple approach in that young players can be quality reasons why we’re successful so if they’re capable and willing to help us in terms of what we desire to get done as a football team then we’re all committed to helping them help us,” the seventh-year coach said. “I think our veteran players embrace that and have mentor-like relationships with our young guys…”

These statements suggest that it is possible to create a culture in the NFL without the hazing of the younger players that appears to go on elsewhere.

In my view, the culture should start at the point just before a player’s contract is signed. The coach should look the player in the eye and say emphatically, “I don’t know what you’ve been taught while playing football before, but if you sign with us, you must agree that you will not participate in any hazing or putting down of players, young or old. Is that absolutely clear?!”

Moreover the contract should clearly have wording indicating the consequences of breaking this rule that includes suspensions and monetary penalties. The coach should underline where in the contract these provisions are, and they should be fully discussed. If the player doesn’t want to agree to these terms, he should be told that he’ll have to find work elsewhere.

Now, I understand that one of the strategies of football teams is to insult players on the other team. This is done in the hopes of getting the insulted player so angry that he will start a fight and end up either getting thrown out of the game or costing his team some other penalty. And so, teams do have to train their players to handle these types of insults. This can be done very effectively without hazing in the following way.

Coaches can have the players practice responding to insults by saying, “Nice try.” The players are told that when they say these words, it actually means, “I am not stupid enough to fall for that trick.”

The players should undergo repeated training on this. The training periods should begin with the coach standing in front of all of the players. He then states, “We are all going to now practice handling insults. This practice session will be done like this. I’ll shout an insult and all of you are to call out, ‘Nice try.’ After your reply, I’ll then shout, ‘What do we mean when we say, Nice try?’ Then in unison, all of you will call out, ‘I am not stupid enough to fall for that trick.'”

This drill should be done with twenty repetitions and then repeated on several different occasions. Then the players are told by the coach that during intra-squad scrimmages, to practice using the “Nice try” technique, from time to time he will have one squad start to insult the other squad players during the practice game. At such times, the individuals being insulted are to practice responding to the insults by saying with a smile, “Nice try.” The coach should mention that it is only during these types of practices that players insulting players will be tolerated.

With this type of practice, players can become competent in handling insults during real games that is consistent with a respectful culture among fellow team members.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, bullying, conflict management, criticism, dispute management, disrespectful, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, Jonathan Martin, Miami Dolphins, N.F.L., NFL, respect, Richie Incognito, threats

Bullied bullying conflict management conflict resolution downward comparison theory fairness free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum N.F.L. pranks respect taunting wisdom

N.F.L. Bullying: The Real Reason for it

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date November 6, 2013
5 Comments on N.F.L. Bullying: The Real Reason for it

Yesterday, my post discussed a New York Times article titled “In Bullying Case, Questions on N.F.L. Culture.” There we learned that what are being called pranks by some and humiliating behavior by others is ubiquitous in the N.F.L. What is the reason for it?

The Times article tried to throw some light on this when it stated that “Most incidents come with tacit, unsupervised approval of coaches and executives, who see the pranks as a rite of passage, a worthy bit of team building and character strengthening.” Hmmm. If the coaches and executives really believe this, what is the reason for their “tacit” approval. Why not openly encourage this type of behavior? I think it’s because they realize that there is something not quite right with this explanation. And if this explanation is not quite right, what is a better one?

We get a clue from the Times’s report when it indicates that the behavior designed to humiliate the rookies is viewed by the veterans as being done “in all good fun” is “entertaining” and leads to “a room full of laughing teammates.” What would account for the veterans enjoying humiliating the rookies so much?

Here’s what I think. Veterans recognize that the rookies are after their jobs. When Joe Quarterback sees a fresh new quarterback on the team, he says to himself, After all my hard work and effort and all of the damaging blows that I’ve taken for the team, now this young son-of-a bitch wants to take my job.

It seems to me that there is an undercurrent of resentment that comes to most players in this type of situation. Couple this with the fact that there are always far fewer guys on the team who are rookies, thus making the youngest players a clear minority. With this combination, we end up with the very same motivation of why so many southerners persecuted blacks for so many years. Many southerners realized that if blacks were to be treated equally, they would end up competing for the limited jobs in their area. When blacks were humiliated, those who were doing the persecution found it funny.

In psychology, there is a theory called the “downward comparison theory.” It posits that persons experiencing negative affect can enhance their subjective well-being through comparison with a less fortunate other, the process occurring on either a passive or active basis. When it is on an active basis, people actively try to create the conditions for others to be less fortunate. This explains why people persecute others, and it is the real reason why the majority of players are persecuting the younger ones.

To claim, however tacitly, that the humiliating treatment of some in the N.F.L. is to help those being humiliated to develop their character is no different than if white racists claimed they were persecuting blacks out of the goodness of their hearts because they were really seeking to benefit blacks.

It is high time that all of us come to understand that to persecute anyone is wrong, period! Whether we are rookies, blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, rich or poor, we can all be harmed by prejudice. It is only by standing strong together as true Americans, that we can transform irrational hatred to wise understanding.

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Tags anger, bullied, bullying, conflict, conflict management, disrespectful, insults, jerry seinfeld, N.F.L., respect

bullying conflict management conflict resolution insults N.F.L. Name calling pranks Richie Incognito

The N.F.L. Culture and Bullying

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date November 5, 2013
3 Comments on The N.F.L. Culture and Bullying

We just finished up National Bullying Prevention Month. Throughout October, after far too many suicides because of bullying, numerous organizations banned together to do what they could to change a culture. What they tried to accomplish is far from easy.

The difficulty is that our culture is filled with examples of people telling us that insults can be the mother of invention. If you are challenged by insults, you can get charged up and prove a thing or two to the insulter, and before you even realized it you have done something very positive.

On “60 Minutes” this Sunday, we learned that Ferruccio Lamborghini was originally a maker of tractors, but was dissatisfied with the clutch of a car he bought. And so when he designed a fix for the car and explained it to the car manufacturer, he felt insulted when the head of the manufacturer dismissed his suggestion by saying he should stick to making tractors. This riled Ferruccio up. But instead of doing what many immature people do when riled up, such as throwing insults back at the insulter or throwing a fist, Ferruccio set to work on making a better car then the insulter. And from many accounts, Mr. Lamborghini did just that.

Absent from the “60 Minutes” story was any discussion about when insults go so far that it is far more likely to have negative consequences than positive ones.

Now we learn from the New York Times that we are about to have a new national discussion about this. Apparently what are being called pranks by some and humiliating behavior by others is ubiquitous in the N.F.L., especially when the older players interact with rookies. According to Jets offensive tackle Austin Howard, “Everybody’s done it. It’s all in good fun. And then the next year, they’re going to do it to the guy who’s there the next year.”

“Most incidents,” says the Times, “come with tacit, unsupervised approval of coaches and executives, who see the pranks as a rite of passage, a worthy bit of team building and character strengthening.” However, it now appears that at least one player has perhaps taken this type of behavior too far.

Richie Incognito, a 300-pound offensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins has been hit with at least a temporary suspension for perhaps being a downright bully. Miami coach, Joe Philbin, explaining the reason for the suspension, stated, “If the review shows that this is not a safe atmosphere, I will take whatever measures necessary to make sure that it is.”

“A safe atmosphere?” That’s Philbin’s standard for stepping over the line when it comes to “pranks.” Veteran Jets guard describes his standard. “Any time a guy feels disrespected and like he can’t go to work and feel comfortable, that’s when you can’t have that in the locker.”

It is too early to know all of the details of what led to Mr. Incognito’s suspension. But many of us who are concerned about bullying hope that this incident will lead to a national conversation about an issue that deserves to be discussed even if National Bullying Prevention Month has come and gone.

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Tags bullying, disrespectful, Ferruccio Lamborghini, insults, N.F.L., National Bullying Prevention, National Bullying Prevention Month, pranks, Richie Incognito

anger Bullied bullying conflict management conflict resolution criticism free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum guilt Name calling social intelligence suicide threats

CONFESSION OF A FORMER BULLY

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date October 27, 2013
12 Comments on CONFESSION OF A FORMER BULLY

A while ago, my wife and I went to Ithaca to see the emotionally charged play, “From White Plains.” The title is meant to suggest plain white kids from a suburb. As the lights first brighten the stage, thirty-year old Dennis hears that he has won the Oscar for his film based on the bullying he and his friend faced in childhood. When Dennis reveals in front of a worldwide audience during his acceptance speech the name of the worst of the bullies whose actions led to his friend’s suicide, the drama begins.

Ethan, the former bully, sees the telecast, as does almost everyone in his life, and his smartphone lights up. Although Ethan quickly and publicly issues a heartfelt apology for his actions as a child, the fiercely outspoken Dennis is not in the least ready for forgiveness.

“Why should a two-minute apology be enough to forgive someone that caused the death of my friend and years of my own tormenting anguish?” he cries.

But Dennis’s friend, Gregory, challenges him to think about his campaign for vengeance. Increasingly sympathetic to Ethan’s pain from the unrelenting public humiliation that Dennis is leading against Ethan, at one point Gregory emotionally declares to Dennis, “It is you who have now turned into a bully!”

The plot is further complicated by the dilemma faced by Ethan’s closest buddy, John. With so much anger being directed toward Ethan, John fears that if he continues to be Ethan’s friend, those who now hate Ethan will also turn against him. Viewers of these scenes, as they watch John, an adult, struggle with this dilemma, get a vivid sense of how much more difficult it must be for kids facing the same type of dilemma whenever they see a friend begin to be targeted by others. Should they stick with their friend through thick and thin, or join with the larger, more powerful group?

I won’t reveal the rest of the play other than to say it’s very well done.

As I left the theater, I found myself thinking about my own past. At first, I vividly recalled the times that I was bullied and how I fantasized that I was Superman and used my powers to violently put all of the bullies into the hospital with broken arms and legs. And then, with angst in the pit of my stomach, I suddenly recalled an incident that occurred when I was in junior high in which I participated in bullying a classmate.

A student in my class, let’s call him Ralph, had a head that was a bit bigger than my other classmates. Another student began to pass around a sheet of paper with a drawing of a caricature of Ralph with an enormous head standing at a microphone stand giving a speech. The sheet of paper asked for signatures to nominate Ralph to be “Head of the Class.” Although I knew Ralph was watching me, I found myself laughing when the paper arrived in my hands. Not only did I laugh, I ended up signing the petition and passed it on to the student next to me, who proceeded to crack up at the site of the caricature.

After class, while walking beside Ralph on our way to our next class, I saw from his eyes and forehead that he was feeling pretty miserable. “Ralph,” I said, “we all get crap from the other kids from time to time. It’s just the stuff that goes on at school.”

“Yeah, well it doesn’t feel too good,” he replied in a choked-up voice.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “well, I like you.”

With that, I felt that I had done my good deed for the day and the incident was over. The next morning, however, when Ralph showed up in the schoolyard just before the line-up bell, the kids in my class began to once again put him down. I noticed there was a girl that I knew Ralph liked standing near by. Although this time I didn’t join in on the teasing, I wanted to speak up and ask the kids to cut it out, but I didn’t have the courage. I found myself afraid that if I said anything to defend Ralph, the bullying would be turned on me. And so, feeling like a coward, I kept my mouth shut.

Fifty years have gone by, and I still feel that I hadn’t done quite enough at times for all the Ralphs out there.

As an adult, I now believe that the best hope to deal effectively with the bullying problem is to have programs at school that change the culture so that the actions of bullies signify ineptitude rather than manliness; and that sticking up for a kid who is being bullied is a sign of a real hero (see my post “Bully and Beyond”).

But for those of us who went to schools that had no such programs, how are we to deal with the ruminating memories that continue to plague us years after we graduated? Can we ever forgive ourselves for the actions we committed in our youth? Can we ever forgive the kids who humiliated us? Why do some people, having been bullied as kids, turn into bullies themselves the first chance that they get? And finally, why do some people who had bullying experiences as kids instead of converting them into hate somehow manage to convert them into acts of kindness?

Over the next few weeks, I hope readers will help me to make sense of all of this.

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Tags anger, bullied, bullies, bullying, conflict management, disrespectful, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, From White Plains, insults, suicide, violence, wisdom

anger Bullied bullying conflict management conflict resolution criticism free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum grieving insults interpersonal conflicts Name calling psychological maturity sensory focus suicide taunting teasing

Teenage Suicide and Cyberbullying: A Case Study

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date September 15, 2013
7 Comments on Teenage Suicide and Cyberbullying: A Case Study

One morning I was getting ready to write my weekly blog post when I decided to first glance over at the New York Times‘ front page. A wave of sadness washed over me as I spotted the following headline:

Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies

According to the Times, 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick leaped to her death after more than a year of being cyberbullied by a coterie of 15 middle-school children who urged her to kill herself.

Rebecca’s mother, Tricia Norman, said the texts her daughter was receiving were full of hate: “Why are you still alive?” “You’re ugly.”

Ms. Norman complained to school officials for several months about the bullying, and when little changed, she pulled Rebecca out of school. But because Rebecca used the phone apps ask.fm, and Kik and Voxer — the bullying continued.

A number of suicides by young people have been linked to ask.fm, and online petitions have been started to make the site more responsive to bullying. The company ultimately responded this year by introducing an easy-to-see button to report bullying and saying it would hire more moderators.

Questions have been raised about whether Rebecca’s old school, Crystal Lake Middle School, did enough last year to help stop the bullying; some of it, including pushing and hitting, took place on school grounds. The same students also appear to be involved in sending out the hate-filled online messages away from school.

Nancy Woolcock, the assistant superintendent in charge of antibullying programs for Polk County Schools, said the school received one bullying complaint from Rebecca and her mother in December about traditional bullying, not cyberbullying. After law enforcement investigated, Rebecca’s class schedule was changed. Ms. Woolcock said the school also has an extensive antibullying campaign and takes reports seriously.

But Ms. Norman said the school should have done more. Officials told her that Rebecca would receive an escort as she switched classes, but that did not happen, she said.

Given the outcome, I too wish that more had been done. It is my sincere hope that all of my readers will take a minute to pause to experience this sad loss of Rebecca.

A few months ago I published a review of the movie, “Bully.” Today, some of what I wrote back then bears repeating.

The movie’s emotional impact has been an important part of the emergence of a coalition working toward altering intolerable conditions too often regarded as “just kids being kids.”

The movie has spawned The Bully Project, an online site where people can learn more about dealing with bullying. There, kids who are bullied can learn that they are not alone. And educators can learn about how to set up a viewing of the movie for their entire school and to follow up the viewing with classroom discussions.

In one video that we can access at the site, we see an entire school going to the movie and then getting the reactions from students. One kid reports that there was not a dry eye in the auditorium. Others admitted that they had bullied, but now realized it was wrong.

As my regular readers know, also available online is this blog, From Insults to Respect. The blog can be used as a free curriculum that teaches the social skills to deal with these challenging experiences. For schools that already have an extensive antibullying program, the blog can be used to further reinforce its lessons. For schools that don’t have such a program, or has one that uses a mere one or two lessons per year, the blog can serve as an ongoing forum to promote peaceful conflict resolution techniques.

There we become friends with a hero that rejects bullying and yet still manages to achieve respect.

The gut-wrenching story about 12-year-old Rebecca’s suicide cries out to us that for too long we have not done enough to address the awful injustice we find in and around our schools. May her story spur us on to do better.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, bullied, bullies, bullying, conflict, conflict management, criticism, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, negative criticism, suicide, taunting

anger Bullied conflict management conflict resolution insults interpersonal conflicts narratives social intelligence teasing The Cool Steve Stories wisdom

THE CREATION OF THE COOL STEVE STORIES

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date June 16, 2013
No Comments on THE CREATION OF THE COOL STEVE STORIES

It was way back in 1972 on a pleasant autumn day. As I stepped out of the sparkling sunshine into the shadowy confines of the Coney Island Child Psychiatric Clinic, I was greeted by three people who could have been movie actors. One was a beautiful social worker in her late twenties, with flowing brunette hair; another, a tall, handsome psychologist in his early thirties; and the third, a psychiatrist who looked like he was trying out for a part as Sigmund Freud, with his long, graying beard and pipe. Initially they were warm and friendly but, within a few minutes, switched to more earnest expressions. The psychiatrist took charge at this point, informing me that I would be working with eight very troubled male teenagers—two individually, and six in a group. My first job teaching conflict resolution under the auspices of a real life professional organization had begun.

It was a period of time before the current practice of converting the psychological concerns of all children brought to a psychiatric clinic into a language of illness believed to be due to chemical imbalances. The prescribing of pills as the main—oftentimes only—action offered was something I had never dreamed of. Instead, a staff of professionals and several advanced psychology students from Brooklyn College sought to provide empathic emotional support, understand the conflicts the children were experiencing, and guide them toward more mature coping. I was one of the Brooklyn College students.

Achieving the first two goals proved to be a breeze. The kids’ hunger for attention made it easy to develop genuinely enjoyable relationships. And the way the boys spoke and interacted readily revealed volumes on the topic of conflicts with which they struggled on a daily basis. Guiding the boys toward more mature coping, however, tripped me up.

I remember one of my first attempts. A burly thirteen-year old boy with wild, unkempt hair began to express his anger about a kid at school who had called him a jerk.

“Called you a jerk!?” I replied. “Yikes! What did you do about it?”

“I shoved him.”

“How’d that work out?”

“I got sent to the principal.”

“Do you like to get sent to the principal?”

“NO!”

“Hmm, if you don’t like it, maybe we can figure out how to respond to a name caller in a better way.”

“If someone puts me down, I ain’t gonna let him get away with it.”

“I can understand that. Let’s discuss a few ways to deal with name calling that doesn’t let the other guy get away with anything and yet won’t get you sent to the principal’s office.”

“Na. If that guy calls me a name again, I’m really gonna let him have it! He better not start with me again!”

“I can see just thinking about this is really making you angry.”

“Yeah, it is!”

“Well, I have good news for you. I think I can help you to come up with some ways that you can handle name calling that you would respect but won’t get you in trouble. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“Listen, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore!”

At this point, I realized that, for now, to pursue this any longer would be counterproductive.

Shortly after this, I noticed that the two black kids in the group I was working with were frequently being put down by the four white kids.

Some words got thrown back and forth that could have made a Brooklyn boy blush. Well, okay, maybe not a Brooklyn boy, but most people. Anyway, my efforts to address this were, unfortunately, met with the boys shouting over me as their anger flamed into rage.

“You’re doing just fine,” my supervisor assured me. “Working with kids requires great patience.”

I would have preferred specific suggestions on how to better teach. Still, his comments at least temporarily took some pressure off of me.

But as time went on, my patience waned, and I began to have difficulty falling asleep. In the wee hours of the morning my mind kept going over and over incidents in which my efforts to teach something to the kids ended without success. And then, during one such night, amidst an experience of what felt like endless tossing and turning and excruciating frustration, suddenly I recalled an incident that happened to me in fifth grade. Back then I had recently seen the movie, The Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper starring as the New York Yankees’ great baseball player, Lou Gehrig. Nicknamed “The Iron Horse,” Gehrig had his Hall-of-Fame career cut short at 36 years of age when he was stricken with a fatal disease. As the film comes to an end, it reenacts Gehrig’s farewell address in front of a packed, tearful crowd at Yankee Stadium. I’ll never forget his parting words. “People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today…today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Shortly after seeing the film, I decided to read a Lou Gehrig biography and learned that his parents were from Germany. Because I had grown up on war movies that depicted Germans as the vicious enemy, I had, at that time, come to hate Germans. But, when I began to read Lou Gehrig’s biography, I found my hatred undergoing a dramatic change. The story tells us that Lou’s parents were from Germany, spoke with a German accent, and this led the kids in his neighborhood to incessantly torment him.

Somehow, my heart went out to Lou, and from that day on, I came to believe that it wasn’t right to judge a person by their nationality.

Lying in bed recalling having read that biography so many years ago, my mind, at one point, returned to thinking about teaching kids coping skills. It seemed to me that there was something about that Lou Gehrig story that enabled me to reconsider attitudes that I had firmly held for so long. Perhaps if I could tell the kids at the clinic stories about a hero who portrayed higher levels of maturity, they might identify with the hero. I figured that kids like to try out the behaviors of their heroes. I know I did. Criticizing the actions of characters in the story would produce less defensiveness than when I had directly criticized the actions of the kids at the clinic. If I told the stories when the clinic kids weren’t already in a defensive state, maybe they would be open to a real discussion. Once they had thought the issues through, perhaps then they would be better able to integrate what they had learned into their own lives.

Soon afterwards, each time I saw the kids at the clinic dealing with a different conflict in a way that struck me as immature, a story dealing with the conflict in a more mature way just came to me in some strange, effortless manner. The hero of the stories, Cool Steve, has many of the attributes that the clinic kids admired.

I made it a point to tell each story at some point in our session when things were relatively calm. And it turned out that the kids loved them. When I told the stories to the group of kids I worked with—kids well known for their rambunctiousness—they settled right down and you could hear a pin drop as the tale unfolded. They discussed them, grappled with the issues, and oftentimes came to agree that Cool Steve had handled the conflict in a way they respected.

An interesting discovery that I made when I was teaching conflict management to graduate students at the University of Minnesota was that the adult students there enjoyed the stories every bit as much as teenagers. And so, with that encouragement, the stories grew and grew so that they now comprise a series of three novels collectively called The Cool Steve Stories that you can learn about HERE.

Readers of this blog know that as I provide lessons on conflict management, I often illustrate the ideas with newspaper comic strips. Although these comics are very helpful for introducing basic ideas, to really learn the subtleties of applying the ideas of conflict management in actual situations it is hard to beat the longer narratives that novels provide.

The first novel in the trilogy is A Hero Grows in Brooklyn. Most of the action occurs when the main characters are junior high school students. If it was a movie, it would likely be rated “PG.” Fights in the Streets, Tears in the Sand, the second novel in the trilogy, deals with some more mature themes. The main characters are now beginning an urban high school and there is a modest amount of cursing, and some talk about sexual feelings and fantasies. It would probably be rated “PG13” if it was a movie. Love, Sex and Respect, the final novel in the trilogy, takes the main characters through to their high school graduation. If the book was a movie, it might be rated “R.”

You can learn more about the novels at this blog’s NOVELS page toward the top of this page. There you will find that the first novel in the series can be downloaded for free on any iPad, Nook, Kindle or computer, or you can order a paperback version HERE.

I encourage my students to check these books out because they provide memorable adventures that are not only fun and exciting, but teach some profound lessons as well.

Have a great week!

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, bullied, bullying, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, enjoyable relationships, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, threats, violence, wisdom

"Bully" the Movie Bullied conflict management conflict resolution emotional intelligence free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum teasing threats wisdom

“BULLY” AND BEYOND

Although the deeply disturbing documentary, “Bully,” has been out for over a year, I just got to view it as a rental a few days ago. It grabbed my guts and gave them a wrenching twist.

The documentary focuses on the struggles of five families. Two students end up killing themselves, others seriously consider it, while one young lady attempts to discourage her persecutors from continuing their bullying by bringing a loaded gun on a school bus and screaming threats.

Each of the family stories is brought vividly to life. For example, Alex, a 14-year old, is teased, humiliated and assaulted daily.

Here we see him getting abused on the school bus.

Trying to make sense of it all, at one point he sticks up for his tormentors, saying they are “just messing around” when they stab him with pencils and call him vile names. At another point, he asks his deeply troubled mother, “If not for them, what friends do I have?”

It is not only boys who are humiliated regularly at school.

Many are berated about their sexuality.

Others, because of the color of their skin.

It happens on school buses.

In school hallways.

And more and more, on the internet.

Often groups of children band together to pick on others.

The educators that we see in the film come across as needing some sound advice on handling bullying. A. O. Scott, in his review of the movie for the New York Times, refers to them as well-meaning but clueless. Particularly irksome to Scott is the scene in which an assistant principal tries to settle a conflict between two boys who apparently had been fighting at recess.

“When she insists that they shake hands, one eagerly obliges, with a smile and an apology. The other sullenly resists, and as she scolds him for his noncooperation (letting his antagonist go), it becomes clear that this boy is the victim, and that the assistant principal’s rushed attempt to be fair is in fact perpetuating a terrible and continuing injustice.”

At first, I was very disappointed that the movie offers very little constructive suggestions about what can be done to turn this dismal problem around. But its emotional impact has been an important part of the emergence of a coalition working toward altering intolerable conditions too often regarded as “just kids being kids.”

In one video that we can access at the site, we see one entire school going to the movie and then getting the reactions from students. One kid reports that there was not a dry eye in the auditorium. Others admitted that they had bullied, but now realized it was wrong.

Also available on line, as my regular readers know, is this blog, From Insults To Respect. The blog can be used as a free curriculum that teaches the social skills to deal with these challenging experiences.

For those of you who are first getting familiar with this blog and want to help others to learn how to deal with problems involving insults, I recommend starting with my post titled:

INSULTS: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

There, readers can learn about eight different reasons why people insult others and get some suggestions about how to deal with each of them.

If you are a parent or educator, in my post titled, TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO DEAL WITH CRITICISM, I recommend a fun game that teaches kids how to respond to criticism in a manner that enhances their reputation.

One approach that I have used in a school setting to deal with these types of issues is to have kids create brief TV shows that illustrate each of the four levels of responding to criticism that I discuss regularly on my blog (see, for example, RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: FOUR LEVELS OF MATURITY). The kids loved doing this. When the kids were done acting out these video role-plays, I had the parents of the kids in my group come, and it created a dialogue about these issues that was very well received.

After the parents saw the TV shows, I made another set of these four-level role-play videos with the same group of kids, and again, the parents showed up. By now, the kids had learned this set of skills like it was the back of their hands, and were using them in settings outside the group.

A particularly powerful way to teach skills that deal with bullying is through narratives that are designed to change the valuation of bullying to make it signify ineptitude rather than manliness. We can change the culture by telling stories in which kids, out of fear, act nice to a bully when face to face with them but speak negatively about them as soon as the bully’s back is turned. “Is that the type of respect you are after?” is a question to ask the students after each story is told.

I’ve published a trilogy of three novels that not only addresses this question, but presents a character who rejects bullying and yet learns to achieve respect.

In my view, it is vitally important that we raise the awareness that something that is viewed as “normal” is terribly wrong. The film, “Bully,” does an excellent job of doing this. But we must go beyond this crucial step. We must also raise the awareness that there are very specific actions that people can take to alter the awful injustice we find in and around our schools, and to teach students, parents and educators alike what those actions are.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags "Bully" the Movie, bullies, bully, bullying, conflict, conflict management, criticism, emotional intelligence, insults, psychological maturity, respect, school buses, school hallways, wisdom