Stop me!

I am a bully, and this is what will stop me.

STRIKE 1: After being identified as a bully (with the help of my parents, peers, teachers, and school principal), I will be expelled from my school, and my victim will not be forced to leave his/her school in order to escape me.

I will go to another school, I will lose some of my power to bully others, as I will not have anyone to impress in my new school. I will not like this.

So I will try and bully my victim outside of school time and school grounds, and that will earn me STRIKE 2: I will be kicked out of the school district altogether, and I will lose even more of my power and more of my fan club will fade away. I will really not like this.

So I will use the power I have left to continue my bullying through social media, and I will find myself pretty quickly at STRIKE 3. I will really, really not like this. I’ll be such a loser, my computer/phone/electronics will be tracked and traced, and I will be banned from social media – period – until I turn 18.

I think I may stop bullying after all that.

I think my ever-dwindling fan base will observe what happened to me and decide to distance themselves from me pretty quickly and not do as I have done.

Although you may see them wave at me from time to time as they pass me out there doing my community hours, I won’t be waving back. My life will suck just as badly as my victims’ lives did.

I will really, really, really not like that.

It’s time to stop talking and do something.

Bullying has been talked to death in all levels of government for so long it’s ridiculous, and nothing effective has been done to stop it.

It’s great to see we now have anti-bullying policies in our schools.

Talking and educating is an essential ingredient in the war against bullying, but it’s not enough, and does nothing to deter the bullies who want to be bullies.

This is not rocket science; nothing will stop the bullying unless the bullies are held accountable. It seems everyone is afraid to say so, afraid to do something or step on parents’ toes or point fingers. It’s time to stop being so politically correct all the time and afraid to offend anyone.

It will take bold moves to make bold progress in stopping the bully. If some toes have to be stepped on, so be it, if it saves the life of just one child… if it stops a child from continued bullying… if it helps a family regroup and carry on after the most awful experience you can imagine… if it helps a child grow into a well-adjusted adult who can hold his/her head up and be proud of who he/she is… then it’s all worth it.

And in the end, if it helps a bully to get needed help to find a better way to live life, then not one, but two children have been saved.

It has to start in our schools; it has to start with identifying the bully, expelling the bully and following the “three strikes” policy.

We have to stop being afraid to take action. It’s been 20 years since I attended my first workshop on bullying, and still there are no plans of action or policies in place to deal with a bully.

1) There should be a mandatory school policy of expelling those that are found to be bullying. Principals have to enforce this and not pussy foot around and be afraid to anger parents. Yes, parents will be inconvenienced and yes they will be upset, probably as upset as the parents who have been forced to find other schools for their children because the schools they were in did nothing but isolate the bullied child by sending them home for lunch or inside at recess so the bullies couldn’t get to them, how ludicrous is that. Maybe the wrath of Mom and Dad coming down hard on a child “should they be expelled” may be enough to deter some of those bullies that are not too far gone.

2) Schools must also be required to take in bullies from other schools, this is a must and this has to extend from school district to school district. Bullies don’t have power when they are the “new kid on the block” and leaving the school district and going to a completely different school will isolate them further from their bully buddies and take their power away. Some bullies may secretly welcome this, as some children bully because it got them attention and impressed their friends in the first place, and they’ve had to uphold that image or lose face in front of their peers, a new school would certainly give them the out they need to change their behaviour.

3) The technology exists to track all social media sites; this must be done now and not talked about in Ottawa for another year. Tracking and identifying bullies who use social media is being done in the U.K. with great success, there are ways to identify users, computers, IP addresses etc. As well, logging into these sites should require identification that can be traced back to the user easily. Why aren’t we doing this? Is it going to take another yearlong study to get this going? We have laws in place in our society, when laws are broken there are consequences for those that break them, most people won’t break them because they don’t want the consequence, why can’t this work for the bully too? Do we have to keep analyzing and re-analyzing this to death…I hope not….let’s stop the bully now and not just keep talking about it…20 years and still were just talking….has it worked?

From the parent of a bullied child: to make a difference, we need to take action now. This is not going to go away without action that works to deter and stop the bully.

My heart goes out to all those who are affected and suffering this nightmare. I don’t wish that on anyone.

K. Cooke, Pitt Meadows