Wikipedia describes Bullying as;
“the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual.”
If your child (or yourself) are unsure of how best to categorize any difficult interactions you are having with others, the simple guide below, that was found posted to a fence, will be of help.
Please share this with your friends and family. Let’s do everything WE can to…
Kindness Blog 
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
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A nice guide, but I’m not sure about the first bit. When someone does or says something that’s unintentionally hurtful, we might not always want to call it “rude”. They might just be thoughtless, or ignorant of the informal “rules”. Young children and people who don’t know our language and customs might be in this category. They just don’t know.
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Hi Sam,
As usual, you make a very good point. Point-1 grated with me a bit as well.
Best, Mike.
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Simple and clear – Sam’s point is also important too. Thanks
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Thank you for a simple visual way to wrap our arms around bullying. For me the problem is in the simplicity on some level. Words are so very powerful and I think we need to be careful anytime we apply a label to any behavior. As a former middle school educator for 15 years I have seen plenty of examples of all three levels of behavior in children. Learning to navigate socially comes with tremendous difficulty for some children and often has very complex underlying reasons. I would always caution being too “one size fits all”, especially in such an important topic. Thank you for posting – the conversations are the most important piece!
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Reblogged this on When I thought I was fat! and commented:
I disagree with the first statement of this image, but everything else is pretty much on point. When someone unintentional hurts you it could just be a case of thoughtlessness or cultural differences. For example, I had a coworker last year that used to talk to me about my weight like it was a natural topic of conversation. I found the words she said to me offensive but I brushed it off to cultural/background differences.
As for the bullying… yea I was bullied. I was bullied up until age 32. The last of the bullying ended when I got an order of protection to stop the emotional harassment and fake Instagram accounts using my name and image. I don’t get bullied anymore. It will be dam hard for someone to think they can. My new self-acceptance makes me… for the most part bully proof. Do I still have moments where I feel hurt… absolutely no one is foolproof… I certainly am not. But my recovery game is pretty strong!
What bothers me the most… hearing stories from my 7 year old nephew regarding things kids say to him at school. Kids he still calls his friends. I want to make him understand that these are not his friends. People who are your friends will never bully you. Friends stand up for you when you are getting bullied. Your true friends are ones that even stand up for you when you’re not there to see it. My friends have all done this and I wish for him the same. It pains me that he faces these kinds of situations because some kid thinks it is okay to put him down. Getting upset at him for defending himself tells him that he is wrong and the bullies are right. It’s a difficult thing to navigate. What I’d love to do is find these parents and tell them teach their kids respect. It all starts at home.
How have/would you handle bullies?
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Reblogged this on education pathways and commented:
Great resource as a way to think about bullying.
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Several readers disagree with the first point that being unintentionally hurtful is rude. I understand your feeling that thoughtlessness or ignorance of customs could cause someone to be unintentionally hurtful. They don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings and sometimes don’t realize that they do, BUT despite the intention, the action (or words) are hurtful to the person and therefore are rude (discourteous or impolite according to dictionary.com). I am living in a country with unfamiliar customs and recently laughed at something because in my home country the speaker would have been joking. I could see by the face of the speaker that he had not been joking and that I had in fact been rude. He generously did not respond to my rudeness, but I was very embarrassed and learned an important lesson.
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When someone does or says something unintentionally hurtful, they are not necessarily being rude. I might be hurt by someone talking about their love for apples, if my child recently choked to death on an apple. But they are in no sense of the term discourteous or impolite. There are no cultures in which heartfelt apple-appreciation is offensive. Given the manifold nature of human suffering, there is literally nothing that cannot be the cause of our recollection of that pain. Not everything bad that happens to us is someone else’s fault.
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