[00:00:22] Speaker A: Hello and welcome Back to the 45 left or right podcast. Today I have my very first guests on my podcast, and I think he is pretty cool. It is my son, Devin. So Devin had some trouble with some bullies at the beginning of the school year, and he is here to talk about it.
He had a rather creative way of dealing with it, and it made me realize that maybe parents don't always have the right answers to bullies. You know, we tell our kids to ignore it, to walk away, to tell a teacher, and that doesn't always work.
And so this is how to deal with bullies from a kid's persp.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: All right, I'm sitting here with Devin Smith. Hi, Devin. Tell me, who are you?
[00:01:45] Speaker C: I am a 11 year old boy.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: What's your full name?
[00:01:57] Speaker C: Devin Gregory Smith.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: And how are you related to me?
[00:02:03] Speaker C: I was born. I was born by this area.
I was born by you.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: So you're my son?
[00:02:09] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Okay. And what grade are you in?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Sixth. And I just ate a sour lemon. Yes, you did half of it.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: So what are your favorite things to do?
[00:02:22] Speaker C: M.
Use my PC sports, mainly soccer and.
And cause a ruckus in the house.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: That's true.
Okay, so we are talking to Devin today because he has had some ups and downs in middle school, especially in the beginning of the year.
And we are here to talk about the apple throwing incident.
Now, Devin, tell us about how you were getting bullied before the incident.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: I was one of the people that. That was. That was bullying me was in the bathroom.
A weird thing that I hated.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Who is we?
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Not the people around me.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Some of his.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: One guy's friends.
[00:03:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: That I play with the main person. Okay. We're not gonna say his name.
Okay, so you were. How long did this go on for?
[00:04:02] Speaker C: How long?
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, before the apple throwing.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: Probably like a week.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: About a week. Okay.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: About a week too.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: So let's tell everyone what happened that day.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: I was at lunch and I.
And I had apple with me.
So by the start of football, I threw at him and I got punched.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: He punched you?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: 5 times and I didn't. And I tried to shove him.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Tried to get him off of you?
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: What happened after he started punching you?
[00:04:48] Speaker C: People saw, and I wasn't bleeding. I was like, what has happened? What has happened? I was just confused.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: So they got you apart and.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: He got suspended for day.
I just got a.
A. A lunch De.
De tension.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So why do you think you got off relatively easily?
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Because I didn't punch.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: You didn't punch.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Mm. Unlike Him.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: So at your school, if you throw a punch, it's like.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: Yeah, if you throw a punch.
And they probably are going to figure out almost immediately.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: In the last two days, so far, right now at this moment, there's been two fights in two days, or I think even more. But I think it's the same guy.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: It's the same guy, but not the.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: Same guy that I punched, but someone from that group.
And I don't know why, but I somehow still see him. At least he's been at least in two fights.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Did I think, oh, the kid that.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Is with the guy who punched you?
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Okay, gotcha in his group.
Okay, so tell me this, was this apple throwing a planned thing or spur of the moment?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Planned.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Okay, so talk me through. How did you come up with this diabolical skill?
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Um, I. What I was, what I was wanting to do, I was wanting to show that even though some may be small and short like me kinda, and they may be new.
Don't, don't, don't, don't.
Don't mess around with them.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Don't mess with you.
[00:07:03] Speaker C: Don't mess with them.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:05] Speaker C: And don't mess with them. And I don't like. And I don't like being bullied.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: That's why I think when after this happened you said something to me, I wanted them to think I was unhinged and don't mess with me.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: I think. Yeah, he did say that.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Okay, so.
So you, so he was suspended and you. And you were given a lunch detention. Okay.
What is your relationship with this person now?
[00:07:43] Speaker C: Relationship?
I talk with him and if I do play, and if I do play football, which honestly I don't really remember last time that actually I don't remember. I've. I don't see him. I see him, but I. But he's not playing with us.
Around the time after the incident. So that was. But it was a bit more towards winter break.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: He switched over. So I might have caused him to leave, but I don't think so.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: But you guys are like generally cool.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: He said, he said sorry to me day after he got back from being sus.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Suspended. Suspended.
Okay. So I want to shift a little bit.
What do you think? So you sort of took matters into your own hands, Right? Did not tell us what was going on.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: I don't like.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Why not?
[00:08:54] Speaker C: Why did you tell us? I don't like being questioned. I just don't.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: What do you mean?
[00:08:59] Speaker C: I don't like.
I just don't like.
I just don't like to be. I just don't like being questioned, especially if it's something that I want to. Especially if it's something like throwing an apple that if it's like I don't want them knowing and don't like being questioned because whenever something happens, you just find out I get questioned too much.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Oh, okay. All right. So if you had come to us beforehand and said, I'm getting bullied, you would be afraid we would ask a lot of questions.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: And try to intervene.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Like. Yeah, like example, who is a guy. Oh, oh, you should, you should talk to.
I don't want to. I don't want to have it in my own hands to see. Okay.
Is there something different outcome? Which it was.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: It was. Yeah.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: And I have not been boarded since.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Well, what. So as a. What would be sort of, what would kids think of you if your parents came in there kind of, you know, okay, this is happening to our son. This needs to stop.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: In school. What would that.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: I'd probably be still be bullied because there's some people like, oh, and they're just mine just go blank and bully me.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: And which I honestly don't like being bullied.
I wanted to solve this problem by using someone older than me to show to where I won't get bullied. Because everyone knows. Everyone knows I was the person that through the apple at someone older than me.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Gotcha. He may have a reputation.
[00:11:08] Speaker C: Which works.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it worked for you.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: So what do you think?
[00:11:12] Speaker B: So as adults, we have our answers always ready, like, oh, you need to tell someone. Oh, you know, you need to walk away and ignore it. So what do you think about some of that advice?
[00:11:31] Speaker C: I simply think of it as questions that I don't want.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, does it work? Is any of the advice useful to you?
[00:11:42] Speaker C: Sometimes, but usually no because I still get bullied.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Gotcha.
[00:11:47] Speaker C: Fifth grade, tried that. Didn't work.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, sort of the like we've talked.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: About all of me being small, short, not and non middle school.
I used. I used.
I. I was getting bullied and I was using you right. In my dad.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: And I. And this isn't working.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: I gotcha.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: And now you're in middle school with like bigger snakes. Right.
Thank you, my dear son, for the interview. That was definitely one of the best ones I've ever gotten to conduct.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: AKA First No.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: I've done a bunch of interviews. I'm a journalist.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: But you're the first kid I'VE ever interviewed, so watch out. All right. Thank you, Devin.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Welcome Back to the 45 left or right podcast. I hope you enjoy my interview with my son. He is awesome and entertaining always, and I just thought it would be interesting to get his insight, A Kid's insight on bullying when we as parents usually think we have it all figured out, I want to go through some statistics about bullying and then we're going to talk about kind of more standard advice for bullying and then some maybe more creative ways of dealing with bullying and just kind of get into it.
Personally, when I think of bullying, I think of it as being physical, you know, punching, pushing around, that sort of thing. And it certainly can be, but more often it includes a mental and psychological harm.
So my favorite tool these days is ChatGPT, and ChatGPT offered a good definition of bullying.
Bullying is commonly defined as aggressive behavior or intentional harm repeatedly inflicted by one person or group upon another where there is an imbalance of power.
This behavior can take various forms, including physical, verbal, social, or cyber. And it is typically characterized by an intent to cause harm, fear or distress to the victim.
Now, in Devin's case, it had been happening for a week or two, and then it came from kids who were older than him. They were seventh graders, so they automatically had a greater social status. Age is everything in middle school since his so since he was bullied in the bathroom, Devin will not drink water during the day, so he doesn't have to use the bathroom.
We could not figure out why he refused to bring a water bottle with him. And then finally he told us, I don't want to have to use the bathroom when I am at school. Now, this isn't just tied to him being bullied in the bathroom. There's a whole other dynamic there. But he still won't. So this bullying, even though he it's better, it definitely had a lasting effect.
I found a really good website and it's from the national center for Education Statistics, and every year they survey thousands of kids about bullying. And this survey was conducted from kids age 12 through 18, so generally grade 6 through 12.
And this is for the which school year 2021, 2022, 19.2% of students reported being bullied. So reported is a key word because it a lot of bullying does not get reported.
Of those, 16.7% were male and 21.8% female. Again, reporting is the key word here. There's a lot that does not get reported.
Now one thing is cyberbullying is way up since COVID but We're going to talk about that another time.
I want to talk about some of the standard advice that we give our kids and whether or not it's helpful.
If Devin had come to us and told us that this kid was harassing him, we would have told him to ignore it and walk away.
Devin had some trouble with some kids last year in his fifth grade class. And we even practice what I call the shrug and move.
Shrug your shoulders with a blank face and then turn and walk away. Like, this doesn't bother me.
We thought that if these bullies saw that it wasn't bothering him, they would eventually leave him alone.
The problem is that it did bother Devin, and I think his face gave him away. He's got a terrible poker face, and, you know, he's 10 years old. It's really difficult to do that, to pretend like it doesn't bother you when you're, you know, faced with it all the time.
And, you know, Devin said it didn't work. He tried it. He made it through the last year, but, you know, it took a toll on him. He had some incidents last year of, you know, lashing out at these kids, and it's. It. There were times that he got really overwhelmed in his class. Fortunately, he had an angel of a teacher who helped him through it. We'll always be grateful for her.
If he had come to us this year with this, we might have also told him, you know, if it was getting really bad to tell a teacher or an administrator.
Our school district has this Stop it app where you can report bullying anonymously. But if he had used this or if we had reported this through the Stop it app and then the school intervened, I believe these kids would have known that Devin reported it or they just would have assumed he had. And I think he still would have been retaliated against. And that's the problem. If we just tell them, tell a teacher, tell someone at the school, it doesn't always make it better for them. It makes the school aware, but it doesn't necessarily make it better for your kid.
There's a ton of websites out there, you know, with advice about how to.
How to help your kids deal with the bully. And some of the advice is good and some of it isn't. This has a mix. This is from empoweringparents.com and I'm just going to go through some of these. So number one tip, don't react out of fear.
If they stand there and take it or get upset and lose control or start crying, the bullies get power out of that.
Yes, but that's not really helpful advice. You know, don't lash out. Don't do this. It's not proactive advice. And, you know, it's hard when you're young to not get upset.
Number two, change the dynamic. Make the bully feel uncomfortable with their behavior. Now, this could be good advice, but you would have to give them concrete examples of this. And I actually have some after I'm finished with this kind of more standard advice. But again, you've got to have really specific things to tell your kid to do this. All right. Number three, come up with something short, dynamic to say, and then walk away. So some examples they cited say, cut it out, Stop. I've had enough. Not funny.
And my issue with this is kind of comes across as whiny. And it also indicates to the bully that you're bothered. Now, I think the stop is assertive, and I think that could work, but the others I don't think are very helpful.
Number four, ignore the bully.
My mom advised me of this strategy to handle my older brother, who was five years older than me, but it was impossible. He knew how to push my buttons, and he was incessant, and I lived with him, so I just couldn't ignore him all the time. Like last year when Devin was in the fifth grade class, he was in the same classroom with these jerky kids all day long. So to tell him to ignore it was really just not helpful advice. We're learning as we go here, you know.
All right. Number five, use the buddy system. Now, I do believe it is important, especially in middle school, to have allies, to have your friends, to have your back. But when you are changing classes and your friends aren't in your classes, that's really hard. You know, I think my son has one of his friends in one of his classes, but they just don't see each other as much during the day. My friends or my son's friends didn't know this was happening even. And my son's friends are amazing boys, but they're different. And I am not sure how they would have helped defend Devin in this case, but generally, I think this is good advice.
Number six, talk to an adult.
This could really backfire on a kid. And this is tricky. You want to know, and kids need to feel free to report these things. But it also, especially as the adult, if you want to swoop in and try to solve the problem like, honestly we have done in the past, it doesn't help your kid. It doesn't make the bullying go away. So this is the trickiest part, I think.
Number seven, also controversial. Don't physically retaliate.
Now, normally, I would not condone retaliating like Devin did.
He threw this apple at this kid, and he got punched several times.
You know, he was lucky that people were around him to help and to say, you know, to get an adult's help. My son is not very big. And so it could have, you know, ended poorly for him, but it did work this time.
This bully got the message that Devin was not a pushover. And Devin recognized that he needed to do something to make him less of a target. He knew he needed to do something to say, don't mess with me. I am not someone you need to mess with.
And he did accomplish it.
Now, I. I told his grandparents, you know, about this and how Devin handled it, and honestly, I was expecting them all to say, oh, my gosh, that's terrible. Tell them not to do that. And they all said, bravo to Devit. And they said, good job. You came up with a solution that worked.
It's so tricky.
I have not found legitimate research to support this. So this is mostly anecdotal, but I have noticed that boys and men can physically fight each other and be fine afterwards or even be friends with each other afterwards. Devin isn't friends with this kid, but they're able to play some football with each other, and the kid and his friends do not bother Devin anymore. It doesn't mean it will work every time, and we have explained that to Devin.
Having said that, he did start Brazilian Jiu Jitsu shortly after this.
So that's sort of the more standard advice. Now I'm going to go and present to you some more realistic advice that I found.
All right, this is off. I found this woman on TikTok. Don't roll your eyes. I love TikTok, but I found her name is Professor Jamie Hamilton, and she has a Bachelor of Science and a Master's in Arts and Communication Studies from the University of Central Missouri, and she also has continued research education from the University of South Wales in the uk her educational foundation is rooted in rhetorical theory and applied communication, and she also has a communication consulting business, which you can
[email protected] and that's T H E C O M M E X P e r t s.com maybe I will have her on if this podcast develops a little bit because she has some really interesting information.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: So her approach largely is not to walk away from a bully, but to confront them in a neutral way because you don't want your child to feel powerless.
Now, One person on TikTok asked her, what should a 9th grade boy do when several people call out his name in a mocking way? And this is similar to how Devin was getting mocked. Her advice is have him put his arms out wide, make himself big, look right at them and say, do you feel better? I hope so. And then clap, turn around and walk away. And I just thought that is a great, that is a great response to something like that. It's not aggressive, but it's assertive. So I will, once I figure out how to do this, put a link to that in my notes.
I wish I could end this by giving you some advice that tied it up in a little bow. This how to, you know, how to teach our kids how to handle bullies, but unfortunately it's just not that simple. But helping our kids figure out how to handle bullies is just so hard.
I mean, we thought about, you know, if Devin had actually told us what was going on before he started throwing this apple, I don't know what we would have done because there aren't any obvious answers. And, you know, these situations are so fluid. You know, Devin found a way to handle it on his own, but it really could have backfired on him.
And Devin, you know, can be pretty feisty and he definitely isn't passive.
So, you know, maybe this worked for him this one time, but it wouldn't necessarily be the best approach for anybody.
I think, though, that it's a really good idea to ask your kid questions about how frequent bullying goes on at their school or other places and just see what information they'll tell you. And they might, you know, that might be a soft opening to going from, you know, this is what's happening to my school to maybe finding out if it's happening to them.
Now, I do a lot of role playing with Devin. He cringes sometimes about that. So I like to role play with him in the car because, you know, not being face to face kind of helps him loosen up.
Another tactic I have is I use his friends and I mind them for information. I bribe them with treats and they usually. I get a lot of information out of his friends, especially when he's not in the room.
And I think sometimes we just have to know that our kids know what to do. They know the social structure of their school. They know that, you know, what sometimes will work.
But we emphasize to Devin that we still need to know about these things, even if we can't directly help.
Just keep those lines of communication open for as long as you can.
This has been the 45 left or right podcast episode three, and I'll leave you with this bit of advice. If you live in our area, watch out for flying apples.
