Put an end to bullying

Group, May/Jun 2003 by Miller, Cheryl K

6 things you can do to banish putdowns, cutting remarks, shunning, and outright abuse from your group

For many kids, school is an extended-length episode of Survivor. The best many of them can do is cram in some learning as they run the daily gauntlet of put-downs, taunting, and abuse. Here's how one girl describes her experience as a 14-year-old:

"There was trouble every day, but on one day in particular, when I didn't do an in-class assignment properly, the teacher... in front of the entire class, told me that I was stupid. Stupid! I Also that I wasn't ever going to amount to anything... I wanted to crawl inside myself and die. But there was no escape. I vowed not to show any emotion, though. I sat there, stone-faced, crying on the inside and completely humiliated... If that wasn't enough to ruin whatever self-image I had, there was this nasty group of guys who were constantly on my case. They delighted in belittling me. Their torment was endless... Almost daily they hit me with books, called me names like fat a-, pig, fatso, and said my nose looked like Porky Pig's."

The woman who wrote these words is Drew Barrymore1-that's right, the well-known actress who first made a big splash as a little girl in E.T. But her fame didn't shield her from torment-in fact, she believes her early notoriety fueled some of the abuse. Barrymore's words could be any kid's words. And they're eerily reminiscent of what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold declared in the halls of Columbine High School when they were executing 12 classmates and a teacher: "This is for all the people who made fun of us all these years."

Now, you'd think that a youth group would offer these beleaguered kids a safe haven from their daily struggles against bullying. Sadly, not so. Teresa is a ninth-grader who recently moved to Georgia from Florida. She says, "It's been really hard. In some churches you have to dress the right way for people to talk to you. Sometimes people will talk to me one week, and the next week they won't even remember me. It's been hard to even want to go to youth group when nobody talks to me."2

The "dirty little secret" in youth ministry is that we're never a fail-safe haven from the culture and its problems. Many of us are blind to rude and bullying behavior in our own groups. How can that be? Well, we're immersed in the culture too. And the example set by that culture is often cruel and mean-spirited.

* Every day in the United States more than 160,000 bullied children purposely skip school because they're afraid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

* Researchers with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have discovered that up to 30 percent of sixth to 10th graders are involved in school bullying (either as victim or perpetrator), with the highest frequency among sixth to eighth graders.

* Boys are more likely to be both victim and bully.3

what's behind all the bullying?

"I think that the outright bullying, taunting, and rudeness are a little more of an issue with middle school students," says Russ Butcher, a youth pastor in Georgia. They don't know how to make their shunning a subtle strategy like high school students."

Santha Yinger, a junior high minister in Illinois, says, "It's more of an ostracizing. Their brains are not engaged to what their mouths are saying. At this age they are so self-absorbed. The media has really pushed the 'cuts' and laughing at each other's expense. In fact, I found myself excelling at cut-down one-liners until God truly convicted me of this issue after reading Ephesians 4:29. We've been taught a lie all our lives that sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will never hurt. Hurtful words are darts that lodge in a person's soul."4

1. Cliques are the breeding ground.

The violence at Columbine and other schools focused a spotlight on the negative influence of cliques. Clearly, there are far more cliques present in today's schools than there were a decade or two ago. Unlike years past, cliques form around common interests more than status. And no matter how well you've fought to defuse the negative power of cliques in your group, you can be sure that some young people in your area are staying away from your youth group because they're afraid they won't fit in.

Cliques thrive because they offer acceptance, protection, and security-they promise kids they'll never be left alone or unappreciated. Many students view cliques positively, defining their clique as "my best friends." If you have tight-knit sub-groups in your ministry, the message outsiders can hear is clear-"You're not welcome here"-and that will cripple your effectiveness.

It's not just what the cliques are communicating, it's what they're not communicating. "I don't believe that we have a significant problem with name-calling, taunts, outright rudeness, and bullying," says Butcher. "I believe most of what we see is more related to shunning and cliques, and even that is not as open and overt but is subtler. Especially with high school students, it's less bullying and name-calling and more social exclusion."