Bullying in teen years linked to health problems

Study: Childhood trauma can lead to headaches, insomnia and more

By this time of year, school bullies have separated their prey from the herd – nice kids, shy ones, the kids whose parents tragically tell them to “turn the other cheek” – and filled their child victims with fears of humiliation, isolation and threats.

Tragically, school bullying is far more widespread than many people realize. Studies show that about 28 percent of students age 12-18 report being bullied at school each year, and about 160,000 children a day skip school across the country to avoid bullying. These targets feel less than others, because that is what their bullies and supporters tell them.

The result is lethal. Far too many times, I’ve talked with yet another grieving and weeping mother who has lost her child due to suicide caused by bullying – bullycide.

Like Jill Moore, who wept when she told me how her daughter, Alex, was so miserable at Jemison High School in Jemison, Alabama, that she hurled herself off an overpass and into morning rush-hour traffic, after years of ongoing bullying.

Like Maureen Molak, whose son, David, took his life due to brutal cyberbullying, even after transferring to a Christian school in San Antonio, Texas. She wept when telling me how David felt that “God had abandoned him. Our family will never be the same. It feels like a life sentence for all of us.”

Like the gentle and humble immigrant mother from Mexico, whose daughter tried to kill herself, or more accurately, tried to drain the pain drowning her tender spirit.

Panicked to the point of wheezing, her mother wept while telling me how her daughter’s head was bashed into a short concrete curb at school by a known female bully. The daughter was then punched multiple times by the same bully on the back of her head as she lay unconscious on the same skull-white concrete.

The girl’s frantic mother said in broken English that she makes her beautiful daughter sleep next to her every night, and drapes her right arm across her daughter’s body so she cannot slip her motherly grasp and try to take her life again.

Though a bullied child can be nine times more likely to consider or attempt suicide, most thankfully do not walk this desperate path. But something within them is still murdered – their vulnerable spirit.

It’s happening at this hour and every hour. Parents across our country are seeing vitality and hope drain out of their precious children. They are seeing what Martin Luther King saw in the eyes of one of his daughters, the “ominous clouds of inferiority (in their) little mental sky.…”

That little light of theirs no longer shines, such as happened with a 9-year-old boy with hemophilia, whose mother pulled him from public school and put him in a Christian school. But he’s still being bullied and is crying for help.

“He’s being bullied verbally, emotionally and now physically by the majority of students,” the boy’s mother said. “He has no self-esteem and doesn’t fight back. I constantly worry he’ll kill himself. I need someone to take this seriously. It’s killing me to watch my son so miserable.”

We adults must lead our children out of this complex bramble of disdain and hatred, and we have a long way to go, as revealed in the latest social experiment from Burger King. You may have seen the viral video where only 12 percent of adults helped a bullied child in a Burger King, yet 95 percent of the same adults complained about their inexpensive burger being mangled.

It’s a whopper of a fail. Until we adults care more about the psychological and spiritual well-being of our children – worth far more than a cheap slab of pressed beef – more precious children will take their lives in a shortsighted and desperate act to just make their pain go away.

Mature, loving adults must lead the charge – in part by taking courage from those already fighting and winning. Like Maureen Molak, who is burning out the bad soil of suffering and maternal grief, and transforming it into a laser beam of love.

Molak helped create David’s Law in Texas, perhaps the most powerful anti-bullying legislation in America. And she spearheaded the DBM Project, which stands for David Bartlett Molak, but also stands for Don’t Bully Me.

This project provides pro bono legal advocacy for targets of bullying and their families in Texas. The goal is not to gain money from the bully’s family, but liberation for targets and their families.

Sometimes, just a letter from an attorney can make bullying stop, smashing the stubborn myth that bullies can’t control themselves. They can. They just need a strong enough reason to stop.

May the DBM Project spread to every state in our great nation, and in the process, drape a loving arm across the shoulders of abused children and their families for generations to come.

The post Dear loving parents and adults, we must lead the charge against bullying. Here’s how we can start appeared first on The Protectors.

That’s when an image of doe-eyed little Hailey went viral. She’s that sorry-faced girl, presumably in her early teens, dressed in black and holding a lime-green piece of paper. On it is a hand-written confession for cyberbullying another through social media. As a consequence, her mother made her donate her iPod to Beat Bullying, an anti-bullying organization.

Judging from the response of many parents, punch-drunk on pop-psychology, you might think Hailey’s mom was Cruella Deville’s meaner sister.

She’s accused of psychologically scarring Hailey for life, and of being a bully herself. A chorus of adults, ignorant as to the real dynamics of bullying, claim that Hailey will be an even worse bully thanks to her ignorant and abusive mother.

We have lost our minds.

Here’s why. For about half a century, the American psyche has been permeated by a squishy-nosed and hyper-permissive parenting psychology, a knee jerk reaction to the heavy-handed and punitive parenting that proceeded it, defined primarily thought not exclusively by harmful shame. As a result, today’s proverbial pendulum has swung too far toward a pernicious leniency, not just by parents but society as a whole toward the anti-social behavior of children.

Ever had the pleasure of being stuck a few hours with children reared under today’s permissive regime during the holidays where anything goes, including your sanity? No wonder alcohol sales spike then.

Consequently, any corrective measure that carries a whiff of shame, such as healthy and needed guilt, gets a bad rap today.

More bullies, not less, need to feel guilt, which we might call today “healthy shame,” a kind of ” “shame on you” for wrongdoing as opposed to “shame in you” that leaves a child feeling worthless and unloveable.

Having swallowed more than my fair share of the sea water of childhood abuse-the burning, gasping, bewildering kind – I know harmful shame. It guts you of life, making you believe you are no one nowhere: vile, worthless, loveless-even to God.

That isn’t what happened here. Look at the first few adjectives of her guided confession: “I am a kind, caring, smart girl.” Hailey surely had her mother’s help writing this. That’s because she wanted her to feel healthy shame/guilt for her action, not harmful shame for existing. This is correction, not identity-level condemnation.

Our semi-declared War on Bullying will not succeed unless we have more parents like her. To say it another way, we will continue to lose lives to bullycide as long as we have parents like Levi Weatherly, whose son was accused late last year of bullying a 13-year-old autistic teen, and who justified the bullying by saying, “I would say three-fourths of this stuff he brings on himself…”

Where’s the outrage for this and countless other justifications for searing the psychological flesh of another child? Sins of omission are just as deadly as those of commission. They just don’t make the headlines as they should.

If you worry about the fragile, inner butterfly of the average disciplined bully, don’t. Studies show they possess average to excessive self-esteem. They are not broken-winged little doves in need of greater tender loving care. Serial targets are the ones limping through life, not speaking up, keep their heads down, their opinions silent, choking down tears, insults and related abuse. They are the ones who are literally having their DNA mutated from bullying, crippling their ability to control their anger, among other damage. No wonder 85% of school shootings have revenge against bullying as their prime motive. Want to retain your right to bear arms? Then support the War on Bullying.

And since when is getting a taste of one’s own medicine always bad? One mother, when hearing about Hailey’s predicament, wrote, “When I was 6, my mom caught me bullying a kid for being poor/dirty. Made me wear the same unwashed outfit for a week. BAM! Empathy learned.”

Dr. Jennifer LaFleur, a psychotherapist from Canada and bullying expert, admits she was a “mean girl,” came from a strong and non-abusive family, had excessive self-esteem, and intentionally bullied an innocent girl out of her classroom. She now helps bullied children. What made her change? “When an older girl, Debbie, bullied me.”

Our schools will be much safer, our ailing test scores much higher, and the mental health of our children so much greater if more parents did what Hailey’s mother did.

So called “compassion” toward a bully is often cruelty to her targets. Keep this in mind the next time we send up sincere but false flair warnings of parental abuse against a parent trying to make our schools and world a better place.

Paul Coughlin is an expert witness regarding bullying and the law, a FoxNews contributor, a former newspaper editor and is the author of numerous books, including Raising Bully-Proof Kids. He is the Founder of The Protectors: Freedom From Bullying—Courage, Character & Leadership for Life, which provides a comprehensive and community-wide solution to adolescent bullying in schools, summer camps, faith-based organizations, and other places where bullying can be prevalent.

The post More Guilt, Less Self-Esteem for Bullies appeared first on The Protectors.

On the heels of the unthinkable cyberbullying case in Florida where 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick jumped to her death after more than a year of psychological assault last year, another horrendous case of cyberbullying surfaced in Plano TX. Thankfully, so has an arrest, which according to police met the criteria of the crime of harassment on behalf of someone who was once a family friend.

Shea Shawhan, a 17-year-old junior at West Senior High School, suffered a severe brain injury at birth, leaving her with a diminished mental capacity and prone to seizures.

Despite her disability, she’s a cheerleader and plays on the softball team. Yet starting about 10 months ago, she began receiving vicious text messages threatening violence, rape and murder from undisclosed phone numbers generated by web applications, even after changing her number.

One says: ”Shea should just have one of her f****** seizures and die because people at west don’t want her. That’s the reason she has seizures, because that’s karma for giving birth to a freaky slut.”

Another: “Shea is so annoying but cute I want to do more than just kiss her I want to rape her then kill her. That will finally make sure she goes away for good.”

People of goodwill quickly had her back, including Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee. The Dallas Mavericks invited her to be their special guest for a preseason game. She even posed with the team’s cheerleaders.

Sadly, special needs children are among the most bullied in any youth gathering [this can include church gatherings], and the late philosopher Henri Nouwen provides one of the deepest answers why. A former professor at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard later worked at the L’Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, working with developmentally disabled persons.

During one lecture, Nouwen’s main topic was the definition of what it means to be human. He said anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists provide the following traits: self-awareness, speech and symbolic cognition, and the capacity to imagine, among other traits purely cognitive traits.

These, he noted, were all mind-centered, which academia and popular thinking believe is the centerpiece of what it means to be human.

Then he dropped a bombshell, the same one that causes so much psychological and physical assault to souls like Shea: If the mind is primary or even exclusively what makes us human, what about those who are mind deficient? Are they fully human, worthy of respect and possessors of dignity?

Our unofficial and shameful answer, especially within a youth culture where unkindness, meanness and cruelty are perverse forms of currency, is no. Of course few are forthright enough to say this out loud—but we do through our actions, as this and countless other stories of bullied mentally and physically challenged people reveals.

Shea, to a malevolent minority, is a child of a lesser god, unworthy of respect but deserving of contempt, hatred, disdain and assault.

Thankfully, courage and character came to Shea’s rescue. Her new Facebook page, I’mWithShea, has nearly 86K likes of solidarity. Bystanders have become what The Protectors calls “Alongside Standers.” Classmates and entire families wear lime-green t-shirts that read, “I’ve Got Shea’s Back.” The assault ended before the arrest, reminding us that bullies back down when confronted by positive peer pressure.

But we need more than positive peer pressure if we are to leverage a comprehensive, community-wide solution, the only kind proven to work. The identity of hard-core bullies, including Shea’s, should be revealed so employers, who pay a high price for hiring such malicious people, can also defend themselves from the high cost of low behavior. Serial bullies do not listen much to peace, love and understanding. They listen to consequences, “What’s in it for me to change?” This is their love language so to speak, so authoritative communities need to start speaking it, sooner than later.

Parts of England are already denying employment to serial bullies. Universities in South Korea deny serial bullies admittance. So should we.

My friend Gary has Down Syndrome, and has shown me a side of human possibility, what some call glory, which is hard to spot in the common life. His exuberance is beautiful and clarifying. I wish I had his Carroll Burnett-like comedic timing and the same acumen imitating Elvis. He is exceedingly kind and is in an oracle of unvarnished love. He comes from love, and love he breathes to others.

And he’s fortunate. He’s surrounded by protectors, people quick to defend him against malevolent forces. Sadly, he’s a minority within a beleaguered community that desperately need more protectors, people with the wisdom, courage and passion who turn awareness about bullying into effective action against it.

Gary is fully human because deep within the blacksmith of his soul is that divine and cosmic spark that imbues all of us with immeasurable value, which on one hand is as hard to measure as the the firmament above, yet on the other is as confirming as look of joy in the corner of his eye.

There are no children of a lesser, lower-case god, just a minority of low-character bullies who assault until confronted by people of goodwill. Thank you Plano for showing us how.

Support = Rescue

Paul Coughlin is an expert witness regarding bullying and the law, a FoxNews contributor, a former newspaper editor and is the author of numerous books, including Raising Bully-Proof Kids. He is the Founder of The Protectors: Freedom From Bullying—Courage, Character & Leadership for Life, which provides a comprehensive and community-wide solution to adolescent bullying in schools, summer camps, faith-based organizations, and other places where bullying can be prevalent.

The post Why Bullies Target The Disabled & How To Fight Back appeared first on The Protectors.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. –  A South Dakota mother is the target of both praise and criticism after she blogged that kids being bullied should toughen up.

Stephanie Metz’s  wide-ranging post, which spread on Facebook after she shared a link, was as much about oversensitive modern parents as it was about kids.

“The main message is `don’t be afraid to parent your kids.’ They need to deal with some hardships,” the 29-year-old mother of two from Rapid City said Wednesday by phone.

“It’s not our job to be our children’s friend and make life easy for them,” she added.

The Oct. 25 post on “The Metz Family” blog was titled “Why My Kids Are NOT the Center of My World.” Its original audience was eight friends and family members who have followed the blog since her first son was born four years ago and who live out of state.

Metz said she posted a link to the blog on Facebook, her friend shared it and then her friend shared it “and it just kind of went crazy from there.” The blog had been clicked on 885,000 times as of Wednesday and received countless other clicks on online sites that have posted it, she said.

She accepts the criticism and acknowledges her sons are still young — ages 4 and 2.

Metz said she doesn’t condone violence but also doesn’t think parents should let their kids shut down when someone’s mean to them. It’s a philosophy she said she and her husband, Matt Metz, learned from their parents and are using on their own boys.

“I feel like we’re creating a generation of victims,” she said.

Bullying expert Paul Coughlin said there’s some merit to that because some parents are too quick to solve their children’s problems. He’s president and founder of The Protectors, a Medford, Ore.-based organization that works with public and private schools to reduce bullying.

“I’ve coached those kids who are over-parented and you kind of want to give them a T-shirt that says `does not play well with others,”‘ said Coughlin, who’s also a soccer coach. “It does make for some fragile children when we over-parent.”

Coughlin said everyday conflict does not constitute bullying. And studies have found that most children will experience some bullying growing up, but it doesn’t do serious harm, he said. But by trying to protect their children, some parents increase their children’s chances of repeatedly being bullied.

“This over-parenting also is almost a perfect storm for creating serial targets,” he said. “Over-parented children are more likely to be serial targets than non-over-parented children.”

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