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Andrea Morisette Grazzini

Consultant, WetheP, Inc.

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Are grownup bullies teaching kids how to bully?

Media personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olberman make a living by catalyzing the ire of their audiences through their incendiary tactics.

Leaders themselves, from pastors to politicians to parents to Tea Partiers and Black Panthers square off against different others.

Sparks are a flying, to say least.

And new movies like "The Hunger Games" and "Bully" provide brutal images that imply youth brutality can be catalyzed by adult cultures where competitive vitriol prevails.

Meanwhile, in the real world, communities and schools struggle to manage the bully-culture that has lead to increasingly more mental health concerns, if not more suicides by ostracized kids.

So, folks.

Who's to blame for bullying: kids, adults, both?
Who should lead the demise of cross-country bullying?
And the $10K Q: How?

Bullying, it seems knows no bounds. Thus, I hope this conversation doesn't get too bogged down on specific groups who suffer from bullying, but more on the larger contagions that seem to infecting many different segments of society.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts --
Andrea

Topics: anti-social behaviour bullying community education evolutionary psychology media political correctness religion social media social norms
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  • Lisa Fairman

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    Apr 11 2012: What a great topic. Thank you for bringing this up. One thing I'd like to point out, is part of the problem lies in the very question Ms. Walstrom asks: "Who is to blame for bullying?" Finding out who is responsible doesn't get us anywhere. It feels good though doesn't it? The search for who did this? And then we get to punish them when we find out! We call it justice! But does it really solve our problem or take some of the pain away so we can put it on someone else for awhile? The relief never lasts though...and has yet to solve any of our kids' bullying problems or our leaders' bullying problems. Consider this...what if there was no one to blame? What if we didn't punish each other? What if we changed the way we fought even at the smallest, most intimate level, so that each fight created more closeness between people? I'm talking about fighting with your husband or wife... Fighting with your child, mother, and boss, fighting with the guy who cut you off in traffic, and fighting when you've had a bad day. What if we changed the way we fought each other as a nation so instead of blame and punishment, we had people suffering honestly and not trying to put it on anyone else. Can we fight to see each other clearer? I think this would influence our kids if they started seeing their parents, teachers, and classmates fighting to connect with each other, instead of fighting to destroy each other.

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