Bullying in Colorado & the New Normal

The Current State of Affairs

The 2014 statistics on bullying, as reported by NoBullying.com, tell a horrific story about U.S. schools: Bullying is everywhere. 83 percent of girls and 79 percent of boys report being the victim of bullying either in school or online, which is up from previous estimates. Every day, nearly 160,000 students skip school because of bullies. One poll showed that 3 out of 10 students admitted to being bullies themselves. Does the prevalence of bullying mean that being bullied is just a "normal" part of growing up?

Let's look at this by way of analogy. Currently, 33% of kids in the United States are obese. Physicians, parents and even the government are taking aggressive action to reduce obesity levels among American youth. In other words, the status quo has been deemed unacceptable. Why? The answer is obvious: childhood obesity has devastating long-term health consequences.

If obesity, which affects only one-third of U.S. students, is regarded as a serious issue to be addressed, then why is bullying—a problem that affects at least 80 percent of U.S. students and which has devastating emotional consequences—so readily accepted as a "normal" childhood event? The answer is that bullying prevention is a much more recent frontier in youth development, and many adults do not yet know how to properly deal with bullying. We have steps, programs and plans to fight childhood obesity, but we're much less prepared to handle the bullying issue.

The Shift Toward a New Normal

Times have changed a bit. Bullying is talked about more often and more seriously, with schools displaying banners and working to educate students about bullying. We even created our own bullying prevention program. These are all great moves, but they won’t make a lasting difference until our nation’s adults are ready to educate themselves and take a stand against bullying.

As adults we have the tendency to let things slide when it comes to bullying. We make statements like “Oh, that’s just the way kids are” and “We survived it when we were kids!” Why? Maybe because we don’t know what to do or maybe because we don’t fully realize the hurtful impact that bullying has on our children. With obesity, the results are visible and obvious. The effects of bullying often go unseen as children simply internalize the hurt.

How to Make a Difference

We as adults need to educate ourselves on how to deal with bullying. For the sake of our nation’s children, let’s not accept bullying as a “normal” part of growing up. Here are a few things you can do:

• Less than one third of bullied children ever tell an adult or an authority figure, so, if you do hear about a bullying situation, assure the bullied child that you consider the bullying to be a serious issue and that you will work through the situation with them.


• When you are attempting to defuse a bullying situation, maintain your composure and refrain from extreme reactions. Stay calm, listen carefully, ask clarifying questions, and focus on the child who is the target of the bullying.


• If you are dealing with a bullying situation that occurred at school, let school officials know what is happening so that everyone involved can work together on the situation. More and more schools are implementing bullying prevention programs, which have been demonstrated to reduce school bullying by a significant margin.


• Never tell a child to just ignore the bullying. Ignoring the situation will not make it go away and often contributes to the feeling of powerlessness that perpetuates the bullying cycle. Don’t fall prey to the idea that bullying is just “kids being kids.”

As bullying prevention picks up steam as a movement, there is a growing number of excellent websites with great tips and resources—for kids, educators and parents—on how to prevent bullying and how to handle bullying encounters. We’ll point you to just a few: check out kidpower.org, stopbullying.gov, bullyingprevention.org, and pacer.org/bullying.

Smokey the Bear, with his famous “Only YOU can prevent wildfires” line, has been telling Americans for years about the difference that one person can make. We’ve got a similar message: the end of bullying and the start of a new normal begins with you.