I wrote my book because bullied kids sometimes commit suicide.
I teach how to make unwanted behavior stop using operant conditioning and how it can be applied to the problem of bullying.
Kids who are being chronically bullied need help. They need to know how to make it stop. They need to know who to report to. What to say. How to say it. What to do next. They need very specific information.
The more chronic the problem, the more help they need. Extinguishing an unwanted behavior takes time. During that time, even if you do everything right, the bully is still going to escalate. That’s the unfortunate truth. We must start telling kids this truth!
Ignoring bullies does not work. Telling kids to stand up for themselves is so annoyingly vague as to be perfectly meaningless. Telling them to not be afraid is unhelpful.
Kids want to learn what to say, how to say it and what is going to work to make it stop! What they want – is to tell someone what is happening and for that adult – to make the bullying problem stop.
What parents need to understand is what the child wants isn’t realistic. To get a bully to stop takes time, it takes a strategy and it takes persistence. And the more chronic it is the hard it will be to make it stop. As unpleasant as this is we need to start telling kids the truth and give them the real tools they need to stop this problem.
On this website is a bully vaccine toolkit. It is designed for kids experiencing chronic bullying to help them create a strategy to make it stop. This toolkit is available for free https://bullyvaccineproject.com/toolkitoverview/
So please, if your kid is being chronically bullied, sign up, watch the videos and start helping them and please take this seriously. And parents – I have a lesson for you too: https://bullyvaccineproject.com/how-to-talk-to-your-childs-school-so-they-will-actually-listen-and-help/