The Reach of Bullying

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It’s been amazing to hear so many responses from the bullying article I posted a week ago, Voices of the Bullied. It’s very clear that I’m not alone in my observations and experience. Thank you all for your kind emails and comments.

Yesterday I received an email from a friend of mine from high school, now a parent. I wanted to share her thoughts with you. This issue isn’t limited to just public schools :

Dear Jonathan,

Your bullying article was very helpful to me. This is an issue we’ve needed to be aware of for our son…last year he was in a Christian private school. There was a serious bullying issue at the school with four boys in his grade. It was very serious. The students were doing things that were along the lines of what you wrote in the article – drawing pictures of this one boy, who they had labeled with a code name, and then “killing” the pictures. This was third grade – third grade!!!

I’ve sent a link to your article to several of the parents in the school who were involved with this problem. The young man with the most serious problem – and whose parents insist that there isn’t a problem – is now in counseling at the insistence of the principal, who was not going to readmit him to the school without counseling.

The sad part is that the students all knew what was going on much faster than the parents and teachers did.  It took a while before several parents figured out the intensity of it, and then it took even longer for the principal to believe that group of parents.  This was the case with our son’s issue as well – so the problem had been going on at least a month before we took action. How hard for these kids!

Thank you for ALL that you and Lori are doing to make life better for so many young people.

Warm regards,

“Tonya”