Blogging the Book

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Update and correction: I’ve been reading more of Barbara Coloroso’s work and want to correct the impression I may have given in this post that she is condeming the bully as being a bad person or a sadist — the child or teen may be play that role (of someone who has contempt for their victim) but can also play other roles (of victim and bystander) at different points growing up. You can read more on her explanation of typecasting and the roles involved in bullying here.

This week has been all about understanding bullying on a deeper level, so I’ve been interviewing various experts with different perspectives on the subject. I began by interviewing Barbara Coloroso who I wrote about earlier this week in The Culture of Mean post. For her, there is very little grey area when it comes to actual bullying. She argues that bullying is not about a conflict – a child is not in a conflict with another child. It’s about a human being who actually has contempt for them and is making a conscious, willful attempt to harm them. The bully derives pleasure from someone else’s pain. In a nutshell it’s about contempt, not conflict. From this perspective, she also studies international bullying and extends this theory to genocide.

I definitely think bullying can be hard core, and we’ve seen what can happen to students who have been relentlessly taunted by their peers. Most of the teens responsible for the spate of school shootings in the the past several years were taunted by classmates. Barbara mentioned that they also shared certain characteristics: 18 of the 24 kids had three things in common. They were all very small, bright, boys denigrated by their peers with taunting, rumors, etc.

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I have a hard time with the concept that all the teens who engage in some degree of bullying are essentially sadists (my words, not hers). Her forcefulness around denying shades of gray led me to seek out another expert, Kim John Payne, for a different perspective. Kim is an Australian educator/counselor who has been working with teens and their families for the past 20 years. He is working on a new book called “Simplicity Parenting.”

Kim spoke passionately about “isolation” being one of the biggest problems of our time including how we truly connect with other people online and off. His theory was that connecting through technology is at its best when it facilitates true connection between human beings and not just through machines.

Kim said he actually had compassion for teens accused of being disrespectful because what other people read as disrespect, he reads as self protection against “societal bullying.” For him, societal bullying includes bombarding kids and teens with the glut of information, overstimulation and overscheduling. Sensory overload. Everthing is moving too fast. He said that from a neuro-psychological perspective the amount of images and information coming at young people is “utterly impossible to assimilate.” The response? Fight, flight or flock. Teens are flocking together online. One way to survive all of this is to get defensive and disrespect others in response to the ferocity of the pace of the life. He also claims that as a result of sensory overload, teens prefer smaller and safer ways of communicating, i.e. virtual or cyber communication. Interesting theory…

I also had lunch with Ypulse reader John Coate who was managing the teen community at Habbohotel. We were talking about the MySpace issue and the differences between traditional teen flocking or congregating offline in person and what is happening in cyberspace. I think that what is emerging for me is what’s different about virtual life and real life. Whether it’s the impersonal nature and anonymity that allows people to bully more easily, misunderstand each other, do things they would never do offline..(I actually would even include “online predators” in this — I think most of these guys are acting out fantasies via the Internet that they never would try in “real life”). All of this is presenting different issues for teens and parents.

John was talking about how his real life community tried to ban teens from skateboarding in their town, aka the flocking of teens with boards in public spaces. The difference is that you can see teens in these spaces, you see who they are with, you hear them, have a better sense of what they’re doing (even if you don’t know everything they’re doing or everyone they’re doing it with) whether you like it or not. When a teen is in his or her bedroom with the door shut, you really have no idea where they’re going or who they’re talking to.

He said that what struck him about the Habbo teens is that they all seemed to have different levels of awareness and agreements around what they can do and share online with their parents, but that having a mutual agreement with at least one parent about what they do online is key.

P.S. I’m still looking for a San Francisco college student to help me with research. If you know anyone, please email me. Have a great weekend!

Update: Dr. Susan S. Bartell, author of “Dr. Susan’s Girls-Only Weight Loss Guide” weighed in over email:

“I’m a teen psychologist and author so I’ve been following your bullying and culture of mean posts with some interest, and would like to add my two cents. I think that there is certainly truth to what Barbara says about bullying NOT being about conflict, but rather that it is about the bully him/herself. However, I disagree with her premise that adolescent bullying is solely about contempt and sadism. I think that for many teens, bullying comes from a deep sense of insecurity and a still very underdeveloped ego.

The bully’s internal conflict and confusion may result in sadistic behavior, but in actuality it is an attempt to define one’s ‘self’ as a strong and secure person before actually feeling that way–albeit in an emotionally unhealthy way. The choice to bully someone else (rather than finding a healthier, less destructive way to define one’s ego) comes from having had this role-modeled on many different levels (i.e. many bullies were bullied by a parent or an older sibling–or perhaps they observe it in our culture of mean) and it has become the blue-print for how to define ones ‘self’ to oneself and also to peers. I’m not sure that all bullies derive pleasure from someone else’s pain–this may be too simplistic an explanation. Many with whom I have worked are very conflicted and confused about why they are treating someone so badly. When you uncover their own pain and shaky identities you often find the key to helping them stop bullying.

That being said, of course I do not believe that bullying should be tolerated, nor should bullies garner sympathy from parents, teachers or peers. However, I think that it is the exception (although the one perhaps that is sensationalized and makes the media) in which bullying is about something as sociopathic as Barbara describes (sociopathy is a deeply disturbed and typically irreversible personality disorder). I think in most cases it is much more about adolescent development gone awry and with understanding (although not at the expense of the bully’s target), the bully can be reversed and helped to find a healthier form of ego development long before adulthood.”

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