As many of you know, I have published my new book for kids age 10 and up, "Bullies to Buddies: How to turn your enemies into friends!" I know I am biased when I say it is a wonderful book, but the reviewers are liking it, too. It won a 2005 iParenting media award. You can find a comprehensive review at Rebeccas reads.

I am thrilled to announce that Cross Country University, the wonderful company that sponsors my Anger Control Made Easy seminar, has commissioned me to provide a seminar on bullying, as many people have been requesting one. I am proud that Cross Country has seen me as the one to turn to for such a seminar.

Some of the most hateful and nasty people you will encounter are crusaders against hatred and nastiness. I occasionally get angry letters from people who read my website and disagree with me. Though there are countless bully-bashing websites that support their point of view and should make them happy, they are incensed by one lone voice exercising freedom of speech and presenting a contrary view.

There is no right to happiness! There is no right to be treated with respect by others! Just try to find where they are written and who backs them up. You won't succeed.

When you have a "right" to something, it means that you don't have to provide it for yourself - society owes it to you. Rather than appreciating whatever the right entitles you to, you come to take if for granted and get upset whenever you are missing whatever the "right" entitles you to. When is the last time you heard someone praising the country for giving them the right to a free education for their children?

At my seminars, I give a mini-lecture on humor. I explain that the modern world is in the process of outlawing humor, and we don't even realize it because our experts in human behavior never learned the first thing about it (humor). They don't realize that humor involves putting people (oneself or others) down. Compliments are not funny; insults are funny. Humor by nature is not politically correct.

I have not had as many lengthy, interesting, and erudite responses to any newsletter as to my last one dealing in depth with Mel Gibson's Passion. Whether they hate The Passion or love it, I guess people just love reading about it. And the really wonderful thing was that none of the letters, whether or not they agreed with me, were angry.

We are so happy to hate bullies that we fail to see the harm anti-bully policies are causing. In my profession’s (school psychology) monthly newspaper, the Communique, authors of an article on “relational aggression” (the supposedly female version of bullying) claimed that relational aggression is escalating, and hypothesize that the cause of the escalation is anti-bullying programs. The article states:

Last month, Robert Steinhaeuser, a high school student in Erfurt, Germany, killed 18 people including himself in his school because his teachers wouldn't let him pass his exams. This, too, is the work of a victim. Crazed with desire for revenge, he believed his maltreatment at the hands of his teachers justified his taking the life of any teacher he could get in the crosshairs of his rifle.

Occasionally I get evaluations from seminar participants criticizing me for being sexist. Why? Is it because they saw me discriminating in some form against women? I have nothing but the greatest esteem for women, and I certainly don't treat them worse than men. So why do they consider me sexist? Because of my grammar.