Dear Rabbi Beren,

I’ve had children, both boys and girls, go through mainstream Jewish schools; some were bullied, some not. What I’ve seen is that when a child is bullied and perceived negatively, that perception becomes very powerful. You can’t just change one person’s mind; you have to change how a whole group thinks. How is it possible to shift a perception that so many people share and that seems completely set in stone?

Dovid

Dear Rabbi Beren,

I read your article in a recent issue of the WWW about bullying, and to my surprise I actually saw bullying not long after with my own eyes. The problem was that the bullies were two very cute little girls. I am not sure that the word bully can be applied to such cute little kids. I was watching a dynamic that seems to have happened before, but I only witnessed a small part of it. The two girls were giggling and whispering about a third girl in the park and saying things like “Let’s plan against her.” She did not respond; I got the impression that she was used to this. I read in your article about your build-up program, so I tried to use it. I did not know this little girl at all – so I just asked her name and told her that I have the same name. I am not sure if that is called building up. I also told the cute little girl I was with that I was very disappointed that she was being mean, but she did not look impressed. Who would ever have imagined that I would see this right after I read your article! What do you think of how I responded, and what would you advise me to do in such a situation?

Chana

Dear Rabbi Beren,

Last summer, I worked at a camp. My seven-year-old sister was in my bunk, and there was one child in the bunk who seemed to have it in for her. She constantly made fun of my sister and got the other girls to join her and not allow my sister to play with them. She made my sister cry, and every morning my sister would say she didn’t want to come to camp. This bully made me very angry. I yelled at her a lot and didn’t treat her nicely. I’ll be working in the same camp this summer. My sister will not be in my bunk this time, but what if there’s another bully? When I mentioned it to the camp director, she just said, “Oh, kids are kids,” so please don’t tell me to go to the head of the camp. I feel bad that I didn’t know how to handle this situation. Do you have any advice?

Malki

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.