Anderson:
I am from Iowa and recently we passed legislation that prohibits bullying of any kind in schools, including anti-homosexual bullying. I am wondering why in California, a much more liberal state than that of Iowa, has apparently no laws protecting young people in schools from harsh words and violence.

When I was in high school, in Iowa, that type of violence wasn’t tolerated by students or faculty.

CNN discussed bullying tonight, but there was no mention of how this child got his hands on a gun. A certain amount of bullying is normal. Guns in the hands of children (and people on prozac, etc.) is not. We need more rationale discussion of gun control!!!!!!!

Dr. Charles Sophy,
To have to let parents know that parenting begins with them, on itself is alarming. From my observation, often times parents wouldn’t even admit that their kids have the ‘bully’ behaviour and some don’t even think that there’s anything wrong with it, passing it off as just kids messing about and finding their feet in the world.
So getting parents to spend time to get to know themselves and their kids, admitting that they lack parental skills and having someone else tell them what to do while living with daily stresses seem like such a daunting task.
A much needed awakening and awareness for everyone but not easy. looks like it’ll be a long road.
Thank you.

Lp Foong
Penang, Malaysia

Very good points.

My daughter just recently encountered a few gals trying to tear her down for being different.

I told her that they do that because they can’t elevate themselves to your level so they have to tear you down….don’t let them do it.

The decided to say mean things about her so she stood up for herself and told them to stop and said that they are not happy with themselves so they had to pick on someone else.

They were speechless (and with a jaw dropping look) since they wanted her to be the victim.

I have also told her that no one can make you feel bad unless you allow them to.

We often resign ourselves to what others want.

I think that if you are stable and centered within yourself, you are not concerned when you encounter someone who has a different view. To quote Shakespeare “To thine own self be true.”

It think that the boy who shot this child was insecure in himself and wanted to stop the strangeness he felt….not right to use force.

There is nothing wrong with a person who is gay….that doesn’t make them less of a person. It just means that they won’t have children the natural way. They can be very good people and have a committed relationship with their life partner.

We need more tolerance in the world of those who are not like us. God created all of us.

With all due respect to Dr. Sophy, his comments were silly, useless, and exactly the type of thinking that perpetuates problems in schools.
With a Ph.D. in psychology myself and working with troubled teens and their parents for 15 years and author of an award-winning book on troubled teens, I think I may say that it is chatter like Dr. Sophy’s which keeps the problems with kids from being solved. It’s time to stop the psychobabbling and face the issues. It is not for kids to self-manage at 14. It’s the duty of the adults in the school (and all schools) to stop bullying. H’mm, they could see about getting the drugs out of schools, too.
Role playing is NOT a teaching tool, it’s a game. Kids don’t need tolerance classes, they need teachers and administrators taking the reins back and being in charge of schools. (And, by the way, I’m a liberal!)
NOT KNOW ABOUT THE TEASING AND BULLYING?? Well, if you don’t pay attention, you won’t know, but you really don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that most kids are either bullying or being bullied.
How to stop the bullying? Stop it. Don’t allow it. It is really and truly possible. It’s quicker and more effective than role playing to teach tolerance.

I agree! It is more of a serious problem than parents are even aware of. It’s so sad that this young boy had to die to bring this issue to the forefront. It’s tolerance that we need and that should begin at home. What are parents today teaching kids anyway? I’d say not much.

Yes it is on the parents hands. At the end of the day your children come hom to YOU. You help to control how your schools react to these situations through the PTA. As a parent of a child in the school system you have the power to be sure there is tolerance. You can’t blame the school for this when there are 30 kids in any given class in a day, the schools are handling thousands of kids up to 7 or 8 hours a day. It’s your duty to your child as a parent to teach your children things the school cannot or does not. Tolerance starts at home and is brought to school by a student taught good manners, at the end of the day your child comes home to you not to the school teachers, administrators or officials. They can only make things happen if you let them know what is going on with your children.

I watched the story last night and was heart sick at the death of someone so young, over how he identified himself. Stories like this will hopefully create more awareness of not only the overall problem of bullying, but of the issue of tolerance. And perhaps even bigger than those 2 problems, is the issue of how children are being taught to handle conflict, differences, etc. The problem is not necessarily that the murderer was a youth that hated gays (even though that is an issue in and of itself), the problem is what he chose to do about it … unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who are homophobic, fortunately, most of them choose not to act on those feelings through bullying, violence, etc.

The murderer who chose to act through violence was not born with those traits … and the school community has some responsibility for helping to prevent bullying and acts of violence, but really, if the same message and lessons aren’t being continued in the home environment with parents/guardians/etc., there is only so much that the schools can do. I run a non-profit that works with at-risk, low-income youth who are constantly being confronted by “opportunities” for youth violence, intolerance, juvenile delinquency, etc…. we have noticed in recent years that there has been an alarming decrease in the amount of parent/family involvement in the lives of the children … in addition, any behavioral problems the children manifest, become understandable once we meet their parents … we have them only so many hours of the day, if they go home and their family tolerates and/or exhibits dangerous behaviors themselves, we can only do so much to help that child escape that environment as they grow up. What we are working on, is how to reach out to the adults/parents/guardians, because that is the real starting point.