Are you spending time and effort trying to get your students to stop bullying each other? Are you getting frustrated because no matter how hard you try to make it stop, it never seems to end? Do you wish you could spend more time teaching and less time policing?

Are parents getting angry with you for failing to stop their kids from being bullied? Are they claiming you are doing nothing to stop it from happening? How does it make you feel when you read articles or hear news reports absurdly proclaiming that bullying happens because teachers do nothing to make it stop?

Is your school’s anti-bullying policy making you miserable? Did you became a teacher because you want to teach kids reading, writing, spelling, math, social studies and science only to find that you are now expected to be a law enforcement officer rather than an educator!

Do you have children of your own? If so, do they fight every day? Do you wonder how you are supposed to guarantee that 30 students never pick on each other when you can’t even get your own kids at home to be nice to each other?

If you have found that everything you and your school are doing to make bullying stop isn’t working, you have come to the right place! Bullies to Buddies™ has materials and services that really work!

Learn about our products

• Whole School Bullying Reduction Program: Victim-Proof Your School.
• Book: Bullies to Buddies: How to turn your enemies into friends
• Manual for Parents and Teachers: A Revolutionary Guide to Reducing Aggression between Children
• Audio CD: How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied without Really Trying

 Anti-bullying policies: an unfair assault against schools

Unfortunately, schools today are being expected to accomplish the impossible. I have conducted a survey of a few thousand mental health professionals and educators–experts at child behavior and education. Their own kids are four times more likely to be hit daily by a sibling at home than by another student in school. They are twice as likely to be called names daily by a sibling than by a student. If one or two parents–experts in child behavior– can’t get their own couple of kids at home to stop bullying each other, what do we want from a teacher who may have 30 or more students?

Bullying is even worse among adults. If you have ever been married, or still are, you may know what it’s like. Why do you think the divorce rate is 50%–because couples are nice to each other? Soulmates get married, and before they know it, they’re bullying each other. Even when they go to professional marriage counselors with the hope of repairing their marriage, there is a good chance they will end up getting divorced. So if trained therapists have such little success in getting motivated adults to stop bullying each other, how can a teacher be expected to make thirty kids coexist without hostility?

Schools throughout the country are adopting anti-bully programs. Psychology’s “dirty little secret” is that these programs are usually worthless–or worse! Research conducted by psychologist David Smith and published in the School Psychology Review revealed that the great majority of anti-bullying programs either have no benefit or make the problem worse! A more recent study published in 2007 shows similarly uninspiring findings. And even when they do have positive effects, they only reduce bullying. They never even come close to getting rid of it all. So how can anyone demand that a teacher make bullying completely disappear?

How to handle angry parents

Parents are delighted that schools are being held legally responsible for stopping children from bullying each other in schools, when the parents themselves have no idea how to get their own few kids at home to stop bullying each other. Not only the media, but the mental health organizations as well, repeatedly make the absurd assertion that bullying happens because the schools aren’t doing anything to make it stop. Thus, parents feel encouraged to complain to the schools that they aren’t doing anything to protect their child from bullying. What should you do when you face these angry parents?

First of all, don’t get angry back or the hostilities will escalate. Don’t blame the parents for raising a child who doesn’t know how to get along with other kids, or they will become even angrier with you. Instead, stay calm and show sympathy for their child. Let them know that you realize how much their child is suffering. Tell them that you have been trying to help their child, but whatever you’re doing isn’t working. You can say something like the following:

“Let’s say you and I are kids in school. You bully me, and then I tell the teacher and you get sent to the principal and/or guidance counselor for bullying me. Is that going to make you like and respect me? Of course not! It will make you hate me. You’re going to want to beat me up after school, or try to get me in trouble with the school by telling them that I am bullying you.”

If the parents have more than one child, you can ask them sincerely, “How do your kids at home get along with each other?” They will probably tell you something like, “Oh, the normal sibling rivalry. They fight every day.” Then say, “If you can figure out how to get your own kids to stop fighting at home, I’d love to know how you did it. I promise I’ll adopt the same approach in my class.” You should find that this takes the wind out of their sails.

How to reduce bullying in your class

The single most important thing teachers–and parents–can do is stop making the bullying escalate. The strange truth is that most bullying between kids is actually caused by adults…by the attempts of the adults to make children stop bullying each other! The very things we do to try to make kids stop fighting with each other actually make them fight even more. Parents make this mistake at home with their own kids. Then the kids go to school where the staff makes the same mistake. There is a free manual on the website, A Revolutionary Guide to Reducing Aggression between Children. It explains how adult intervention causes most of the bullying between kids, and how to dramatically reduce it by using two “magic” responses. You can also refer parents to this manual so they can learn how to get their kids to fight less at home. If they end up using it, they will be very grateful to you. We also sell a printed and bound updated version of this manual for $10.

Next is getting your students to learn how to deal with bullying, because ultimately the only one who can get a child to stop being bullied is the child him/herself. Bullying happens throughout life, and it happens most severely right at home. So the sooner your students learn how to deal with bullying, the better their chances will be for living happy, harmonious lives. To help your students, Bullies to Buddies™ has both free materials as well as materials and programs for a fee.

There is a free manual on this website called How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied without Really Trying. It has helped many kids throughout the world, and we hope it will help your students, too. The advice is simple, but it needs to be followed carefully or it might not work. There are also Spanish and Dutch translations. For bullying over the Internet, there is an article on Cyberbullying. There is another important article on How to Be a Good Sport.

The website manual, How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied without Really Trying, is available on CD so your students can listen to it instead of reading. It also contains a recording of me doing an exercise with a kid that shows why people pick on us and how to make them stop. Many teachers have had the entire class listen to the CD together, and before long bullying decreased dramatically. We also have a book, longer and more detailed than the website manual, called Bullies to Buddies: How to turn your enemies into your friends.

Reading a manual or listening to a CD is not always enough. Some kids need to be helped by an expert they can actually talk to. Bullies to Buddies™ offers a counseling program for a fee, with a money-back guarantee. You can read about the program here. If you have students you think really need this service, you may want to refer parents to it.

If you want to help the entire school, possibly the most cost-effective way is to purchase our comprehensive bullying reduction program, Victim-Proof Your School. It contains a DVD for students, one for school staff, and a printed Trainer’s Manual.

Feel free to read my eye-opening, unconventional articles on bullying and related subjects in my newsletters. And while you’re reading this, how about signing up to be on our mailing list so you can receive my newsletters as soon they are sent?

Best Wishes,
Izzy Kalman