5 Bullying Prevention Tips from an Expert

This guest post from Fabian Ramirez, a popular anti-bullying speaker and drug-prevention specialist, offers insight into how kids are targeted and ways they can be empowered instead of victimized.


Is your child being bullied? Here are five bullying prevention tips to help you understand why some students decide to pick on other kids.

1. The Classic Bully Was a Victim First

Hurt people, Hurt people. People who have been hurt in the past, and do not go through some sort of healing process, often either hurt other people in the same way or they let the hurting action continue to happen.

Healed people, heal people. It’s best to help students talk to caring adults about their hurts so they can heal emotionally from their pain. Talking to a counselor will help to strengthen a student’s emotional health. Many students care about physical strength training but often disregard the importance of being emotionally healthy. Emotionally healthy students stabilize the class and the school culture.

2. Victim Mentality vs. Leadership Mentality

People who have been hurt and haven’t gone through any healing process often carry a victim mentality, and rightly so. When a person with a victim mentality walks into a room, they say to themselves, “how are OTHERS going to treat ME.”

When a leader walks into a room, they say to themselves, “how can I treat OTHERS.” Leaders will focus on how they are going to treat other people.

3. The Golden Rule vs. the Law of Reciprocity

Most people know the Golden Rule; however, they do not live by the Golden Rule. Most people live by the Law of Reciprocity, which says that if you’re nice to me then I’m going to be nice to you. This law does not work because if we live by this, then if you’re mean to me, according to the law of reciprocity, I’m going to be mean back to you. It’s an eye for eye approach. So basically, I could be having a good day and the moment you say something bad about me, now I have to say something bad about you, which ruins my day. So now my day will be dictated by how others treat me. This gives away a lot of the power we all have within us.

However, we retain our power when we live out the Golden Rule. This rule says that we will treat other people the way we want to be treated. This rule is to be implemented when people are mean to us. So, when someone says something mean to you, use the Golden Rule when you react. You don’t let people run over you or treat you however they want, but regardless of how mean people can be, we do not try to match their meanness. Instead, we do the complete opposite.

4. Resilient Students Are Less Likely to Be Bullied

The goal is for students to become resilient. To be resilient is to have something taken apart and then put back together in a way that it can function like it was intended to function. So we want students to get to the point where they go through trials or have a mean moment with another student and they can quickly go back to being the student they were supposed to be. They don’t fall apart, they go through the healing process, they don’t stay victims, and they can continue to be the student they were supposed to be.

5. Fights Don’t Start Off as Fights

Most fights happen because students didn’t know how to resolve a conflict on their own. A student should never hit another student for whatever reason. When a student puts their hands on another student without permission it’s assault, it’s a crime and should be dealt with as such.

 

Join speaker and trainer, Fabian Ramirez, for a free online interview-style webinar. Fabian speaks on the differences between teasing, conflict, and bullying as well as the warning signs that a child is being bullied. And he offers suggestions on what parents can do to help their children in these situations. Register for this free webinar online.

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