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What is Bully Kindness?

The Buddhist Answer to Bullies

Published in Psychology Today this article list 5 steps in stopping bullying.

  1. See the suffering
  2. Protect yourself
  3. Use Mantra’s
  4. Apply Kindness
  5. Cut-off 

 

If you would like to see the full article here is the link. The Buddhist Answer to Bullies

I found this article interesting, though I must say that we must be careful in all of our suggestions to our children or ourselves about bullying that we do not leave the victim feeling “less than”.  This leads to a life time of issues that will only need to be dealt with later in life. 

I am looking forward to teaching a Verbal Self Defense this fall that has been taught to and used by police officers all over the world.  It is called Verbal Judo.  I recently completed a college course for this and am preparing to bring it to our community this fall.  Verbal Judo is excellent in that it allows all parties to not lose face and stay strong themselves, especially the victim of the attack.

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Tolerance: No discriminatory comments in your presence

At some point in your parenting you are going to hear your child say some things that are going to shock you.  Most likely they will  be repeating what they heard someone else say.  It may be a stereotyping of Asians, African Americans, blondes, football players, the elderly, police officers, or something as simple as “those guys are a bunch of fags”.
When you are present and a comment or joke is made along those lines as a parent who wants to teach tolerance, we must speak up immediately and let them know that we find it disrespectful and biased.  Our children need to see that we are not comfortable with talk like that and we will not permit it to happen.
If we start this early in the child’s life they should begin to imitate this response among their peers, setting them up as an example of a tolerant person.