As I embark on the journey of parenting, I join all of the other parents out there in wanting the very best for my child. And among the many concerns we have is that she not become a bully or a target for one. Already at the age of two, I’ve watched with some degree of horror as some older kids have played very rough with her, reducing her to tears.
At the same time, we’ve witnessed a deeply empathetic streak in her. One morning, as she and my wife sat under a blanket, she looked up at me and said, “dada needs a blanket.” She hopped off the couch, went to her room, brought back her favorite blanket, and put it on me. Then she plopped back onto the couch with my wife and under their blanket.
She did have a difficult period, however, when we moved her up to the “big kids” daycare of 2-3 year-olds last year. On a couple of occasions, she bit a classmate. However, when we inquired about the circumstances, we learned that she bit bigger boys who had trapped her.
At first, our response was, “okay, if bigger boys trap or push around younger girls, they deserve to be bit!”
Find your voice
But the school assured us they were teaching her a better technique: using her voice. Now when she was trapped or scared, she was supposed to shout “no” or “stop,” perhaps using the sign language for stop, which is a sort of chopping motion of the right hand into the left palm.
That worked well, and our child even uses that on us from time to time when we’re doing something she doesn’t like.
Stella O’Malley, author of the new book, Bully-Proof Kids, says this is essential for children to learn. And it pertains not just to those being bullied, but also to their friends, to friends of bullies, and to bystanders.
As the famous quote from German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer goes, “not to speak is to speak; not to act is to act.”
Developing one’s ability to speak up when trouble is beginning is a powerful life skill. Too often today, the loudest voices push out quiet speakers of truth. But practicing, again and again, speaking one’s own truth and setting boundaries will benefit any one of us throughout life.
This is a skill that even adults can learn and hone. As I’ve written about before, many of our habitual patterns as adults stem from childhood experiences. Maybe we were bullied by someone at school. Maybe we had a parent or two who invalidated our feelings, leaving us frustrated and silent.
Mindfully exploring our past
Whatever has led us to have difficulties expressing ourselves, mindfulness can help. Once we have a regular practice, just sitting and watching the breath, we can allow certain feelings and memories to arise. Once they have arisen, we can examine them without reaction. Then, with kindness, we can inquire into how we can best move forward.
The psychologist and mindfulness teacher Tara Brach offers a meditation technique called RAIN:
- Recognize the emotion or memory that has arisen
- Allow it to come fully into our mind’s space
- Investigate it with kindness and curiosity
- Non-identify with it, meaning that we see it as simply one cloud in the vast expanse of our sky-like mind
In this way, past experiences that have stolen our voice or diminished it can be re-examined in a safe way. This, in turn, reduces their effect.
Safeguarding from Bullies
In learning to diffuse these past events and feelings, we are in a way, diffusing our inner bully. And in doing this we achieve two results. First, we free ourselves to again speak our truth. We can quickly identify and point out bullying as it occurs.
And second, we free ourselves to see and vocalize our needs. This prevents us from becoming a bully. After all, a bully is someone who cannot express his or her needs in a healthy, respectful way and repeatedly resorts to physical or verbal violence instead.
Seeing that we, too, hold the potential to become a bully, we can view them with some empathy. Not a kind of foolish empathy that allows bad deeds, but an empathy that sees the bully as a fellow human with complex emotions and memories.
With this, we can loosen our own “us vs them” instincts and, if the opportunity arises, we can help the bully to work through his or her own difficulties. In fact, many psychologists urge us to drop the term “bully” altogether and instead use a gentler term like “tricky person.” We can see that the tricky person isn’t necessarily tricky all of the time or to all people, so we see that they can change in their relationship to whoever they are bullying or causing trouble toward.
The loving-kindness practice
In Buddhist practice and in mindfulness communities, the loving-kindness practice can be of great help too. In this practice, described fully in a previous blog post, one works with cultivating loving-kindness toward oneself, a good friend, a neutral person, and a difficult person. Then the loving-kindness is radiated outward throughout the world.
If we have this practice in our “tool-belt,” we can invite in those bullies or tricky people in our lives when we reach the fourth stage. Slowly but surely, we break down barriers between ourselves and that person. And even if we cannot change their behavior and need to maintain boundaries, we can see that they too wish to be well and deserve to be happy.
Justin Whitaker, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in Buddhist ethics from the University of London. He has given lectures, and taught Buddhist studies and Philosophy at Oxford University, the University of Hong Kong, the University of Montana, and at Antioch University’s intensive study-abroad program in India. A certified meditation teacher, he is a regular contributor to Patheos.com, and Senior Correspondent for Buddhistdoor Global. He lives in Missoula with his family.