Yaakov* was at that tough age, when a child is beginning to move out of being a little kid but not quite at the grown kid stage, the age when the other kids start to look more closely at how you dress, how you carry yourself, how you look. Unfortunately for Yaakov, the boys in his class looked down on him. It was a tough time at home, too. His parents weren’t getting along; they were having money problems and fighting a lot. Neither of them had the focus or emotional availability to see what Yaakov needed. The kids noticed that he wore old clothes that didn’t fit him, they weren’t washed and ironed neatly, and he carried himself in a withdrawn and unapproachable way. That’s when Reyus got involved.
The principal of the school had heard of our Buildup
program and reached out to bring it into his school. We began working with the
school and training the staff, and an amazing thing happened. The principal was
walking past Yaakov and another student in the hallway, one day, and happened
to hear Yaakov tell this boy a joke. The joke was genuinely very funny. He
thought to himself how funny Yaakov was and was about to keep walking, as he
would normally have done, but then our Buildup training kicked in, and he
realized that this was a golden opportunity to provide Yaakov with a “buildup.”
On the spot, he stopped and said loudly and clearly for all the boys around to
hear that Yaakov was very funny. A nearby boy, then turned to Yaakov and said,
“You know, what he [the principal] said is right.” That’s all it took for
things to start to turn around.
There was a tremendous increase in Yaakov’s self-esteem. He
started to carry himself differently, and his classmates started to see him
differently. They even began including him in out-of-school activities as a
direct result of this and other buildups he received. The full program was
implemented, and by the end, Yaakov sought out a leadership role in school and became
a part of the class government that year.
Yaakov’s situation tears at the heart of most parents. Chas veshalom this should happen to any
child, much less our own. Almost all of us experience some sort of negativity
from others growing up. But when this negativity rises to the level of
bullying, the impact can be devastating. And the effects don’t stop in childhood;
it is known that unresolved emotional damage from childhood bullying can chas veshalom lead to depression, an
inability to make healthy relationships, or worse.
This is particularly serious for this generation of
children and teens, whose mental health has suffered significantly in recent
years, making them more susceptible to bullying, both on the giving and
receiving end, and less able to deal with its effects.
Unfortunately, many children in our community experience
this kind of exclusion and bullying. When I meet new people and tell them what
I do for a living, so many of them share stories with me of the pain and
humiliation that they or someone they know endured as a child due to bullying.
All of them are looking for an answer, a way to resolve the problem. It’s not
because our children are bad or our chinuch
is weak but because it’s a normal part of childhood development. When a child
is different or hard to understand, other children are inclined to turn away
from him or her. It’s our job as parents and educators to teach our children
how to deal with such situations. We need, first and foremost, to protect the
victim, but in a way that helps the bully to grow and change.
I’m sometimes asked about the role of the other children in
the class. Is it their responsibility to stand up to the bully and support the
victim? As a parent, of course I teach my children that if they see someone
being bullied to make it clear they’re not on the bully’s side and try to
support the victim as much as possible. This is for their own middos and so the victim doesn’t feel so
alone. But the onus is not on the kids to solve the problem; it’s on the
adults. The adults are in influential roles in the children’s lives, and it’s
for them to use that influence to bring a new perspective to the children and
help them see the individual uniqueness and value of every single person. They
are the ones who must put active effort into resolving any bullying situations.
More and more schools recognize this truth and are
beginning to take bullying seriously. My organization, Reyus, has developed a
unique, evidence-based approach to help school staff identify and address clear
bullying situations as well as those that may lead to bullying. We’ve run
this program in several different schools across the country, for both boys and
girls, and each time, we’ve applied our approach to successfully resolve the
issues and leave teachers with the skills they need to continue the work on
their own.
Our Buildup program is designed to help these schools be
systematic and effective with concrete steps to immediately address any
bullying situations and ultimately build up all children in the school, so they
gain more self respect and confidence. The schools we’ve worked with have not
only reported a tremendously positive impact on the specific children they were
trying to help, baruch Hashem, but
the success overflowed to both the other students and the staff. The positive
effect and renewed warm energy are palpable! And the staff remained fired up to
continue implementing the principles of Buildup long after the program ended.
We’ve seen time and again how solvable these bullying
situations are, far easier than most people imagine. Our schools have many
priorities, and our excellent mechanchim
have their hands full with all they do to support their students, which is why
a program like Buildup is so important. It taps into the strength that
educators already possess while providing them with a simple way to put that
strength into action.
Our children’s mental and emotional health has been
entrusted to our care, and with Hashem’s help, we have the opportunity to teach
and model for children how they can feel good about themselves and appreciate
others. It’s hard to think of something more meaningful and satisfying
than watching your hard work truly change the trajectory of a child’s
life.
Reyus is dedicated to building up
children and recognizing their individual value to empower them to live with
confidence and joy. Their groundbreaking programs, Buildup and Camp Chaverim,
counteract and prevent the destructive consequences of bullying by allowing
children to appreciate their own distinctive value and provide them with the
tools to succeed. To learn more, go to reyus.org.
* Names and
details have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
