One of the reasons we have failed to get bullying to stop is because we are focused on bullies being bad and so we think we can punish them to get them to stop. Behavioral change doesn’t work that way. At. All.
The advice everyone gives about how to deal with a bully is wrong. There. I said it. Someone had to. To get a bully to stop you need to remove their reward. You don’t do that by ignoring them.
Whenever I tell people that the best way to stop bullying is to be compassionate, people tell me I’ve lost my mind. There is a reason every major religion and philosophy teaches compassion. It’s a powerful tool for managing interpersonal dynamics. Use it. It won’t make you weak. It will make you strong.
The problem is that the most effective bullying prevention programs don’t help everyone. They help encourage kids to be “upstanders” but they don’t really do much to help kids who are dealing with a chronic bullying problem. Once bullying has become chronic, what the kids need now is to be taught how to get it to stop.
