Stop bullying as it absolutely useless

Dear Bloggers,


My daughter is being bullied at school and what I think is a strange side effect. The victim is paid attention to but there is nothing done to tne source. My wife had enough of the not do anything attitude of the teacher and schoolboard. So she kicked in when my daughter told that it has started again. Maybe it was not the right way to do it, but it looks like we are finally getting somewhere although it is a bit late. If you don’t stop or remove the one that bullies it is that he or she will find a next victim as they don’t care as long as they have the power. Start with taking the one that bullies apart to see where his or her life went wrong. Maybe he or she is the one that is cornered at home. It sounds too me that there is only eye for the victim and not for the source isn’t this the same as trying to extinguish a fire with petrol.

What is bullying?

Bullying is abusive behavior by one or more students against a victim or victims. It can be a direct attack -- teasing, taunting, threatening, stalking, name-calling, hitting, making threats, coercion, and stealing -- or more subtle through malicious gossiping, spreading rumors, and intentional exclusion. Both result in victims becoming socially rejected and isolated.

Boys tend to use physical intimidation or threats, regardless of the gender of their victims. Bullying by girls is more often verbal, usually with another girl as the target. Cyber-bullying by both boys and girls -- in online chat rooms, e-mail, and text-messaging -- is increasing.

Bullying is a common experience for many children and teens. Direct bullying seems to increase through the elementary school years, peak in the middle school/junior high school years, and decline during the high school years. Although direct physical assault seems to decrease with age, verbal abuse appears to remain constant.

Whether the bullying is direct or indirect, the key component of bullying is physical or psychological intimidation that occurs repeatedly over time to create an ongoing pattern of harassment and abuse.

Who bullies?

Students who engage in bullying behaviors seem to have a need to feel powerful and in control. They appear to derive satisfaction from inflicting injury and suffering on others, seem to have little empathy for their victims, and often defend their actions by saying that their victims provoked them in some way.

Bullies often come from homes in which physical punishment is used, where striking out physically is a way to handle problems, and where parental involvement and warmth are frequently lacking.
Students who regularly display bullying behaviors are generally defiant or oppositional toward adults, antisocial, and apt to break school rules.

Bullies appear to have little anxiety and to possess strong self-esteem. There is little evidence to support the contention that bullies victimize others because they feel bad about themselves.

Chronic bullies seem to continue their behaviors into adulthood, negatively influencing their ability to develop and maintain positive relationships, and can experience legal or criminal troubles as adults.

Bystanders also play a role in bullying:

· the assistant who joins the bully

· the re-enforcer who encourages the bully by observing and laughing

· outsiders who avoid the bullying by staying away and not getting involved for fear of losing social status or being bullied as well

If you suspect your child is bullying others, it's important to seek help for him or her as soon as possible. Without intervention, bullying can lead to serious academic, social, emotional and legal difficulties. Talk to your child's pediatrician, teacher, principal, school counselor, or family physician. If the bullying continues, a comprehensive evaluation by a mental health profesional should be arranged. The evaluation can help you and your child understand what is causing the bullying, and help you develop a plan to stop the destructive behavior.

Who gets bullied?

Victims of bullying may be anxious, insecure, and cautious and suffer from low self-esteem, rarely defending themselves or retaliating when confronted by students who bully them. They may lack social skills and friends and thus are often already socially isolated. Victims tend to be close to their parents and may have parents who can be described as overprotective.

Victims of bullies often fear school and consider it to be an unsafe and unhappy place. Victims will often stay home 'sick' rather than go to school or travel on the school camps.

Victims experience real suffering that can interfere with their social and emotional development, as well as their school performance. Some victims of bullying have attempted suicide rather than continue to endure such harassment and abuse. Other victims have taken out their anger, and frustration in violence. Most of the young people who have caused school-related-violent-deaths, have been victims of bullying. Experts, pointing to such tragic events as Columbine, agree that bullying can lead to serious violence, including murder and suicide.

Also adults can face these problems

If you suspect your child may be the victim of bullying ask him or her to tell you what's going on. It's important to respond in a positive and accepting manner. Let your child know it's not his or her fault, and that he or she did the right thing by telling you. Ask your child what he or she thinks should be done. What's already been tried? What worked and what didn't? Help your child practice what to say to the bully so he or she will be prepared the next time.

Other specific suggestions include the following:

· Know the school policies that protect students from harassment, bullying, and physical violence. All students have the right to a safe and secure learning environment. Get copies of these policies and procedures.

· Seek help from your child's teacher, the school guidance counselor, and school administrators -- and hold them accountable for following school policy. Most bullying occurs on playgrounds, in lunchrooms or in unsupervised halls. Ask the school administrators to find out about programs other schools and communities have used to help combat bullying, such as peer mediation, conflict resolution, anger management training, and increased adult supervision.

· Notify the police if your child is assaulted. Get a restraining order so that the bully is required by law to have no contact with your child.

· If school officials and the police do not follow policy or laws, take legal action

If your child becomes withdrawn, depressed, reluctant to go to school, or if you see a decline in school performance, additional consultation or intervention may be required.

A menthal health professional can help your child and family and the school develop a strategy to deal with the bullying. Seeking professional assistance earlier can lessen the risk of lasting emotional consequences for your child.

Why don't young people tell adults?

Students typically feel that adult intervention is infrequent and ineffective and that telling adults will only bring more harassment from bullies. Shortly sad telling someone means more pain. Students are also reluctant to tell teachers or school staff as many adults view bullying as a harmless rite of passage that is best ignored unless verbal and psychological intimidation crosses the line into physical assault or theft.

What can adults do to stop the bullying?

Combating bullying is a mission that requires cooperation between everyone involved. Parents, the school, and the community must work together to stop bullying. A comprehensive intervention plan that involves all students, parents, and school staff can help ensure that all students can learn in a safe and fear-free environment.

This can include school surveys on bullying to identify the problem, awareness campaigns in schools, libraries, and recreation centers, and a school climate where bullying is not tolerated (educational programs, peer counseling, whole-school policies, classroom rules, cooperative learning activities, increased supervision during lunch and recess).

If your child is a victim of bullying try to see the signals they will give by changes in behaviour for example and talk to your child to find out what might have gone wrong. Straight away talk to the teacher to make them aware of the problem. We talked about the problems my daughter faces and due to her low self-esteem she will start with practising the martial art of Judo. My daughter is a victim of intentional exclusion in her class. She is facing this together with another girl in her class. None of the kids in her class dares to stand up to the bully as they believe that he is the powerful one and tells that he is not afraid of anyone. (Hitler had a same kind of mental disorder, so the bully might get somewhere.)

Judo not only for boys

Luckely she has not been assaulted in a physical way and to prevent that she will be a victim later in her life. Make sure that your child starts to find new ways to make new friends in school as long as they feel safe and happy the rest will change step by step. As a parent stand up for the rights of your child. At least she can defend herself. About one thing I am quite happy that it does not effect her learning process. Yes bullying is from all times. But people that bully are normally not the sharpest knives in the kitchendrawer. (I would rather call them low lives.)

At least I will try to have respect for every living creature.

The Old Sailor,

Shopping or Sex?

Dear Bloggers,


"Women Think of Shopping as Much as Men Think of Sex!" screams a headline in the free newspaper of last week.

Woohoo, boy. This is just about the most dubiously sourced piece of journalism.

A study says that women think about buying a new outfit once every minute -- or put another way, 60 times each waking hour. This data comes from the responses of 74% of 778 women aged 19 to 45 at this 'online fashion bible' web site. In other words, that's 575 self-selected women.

Now let's take a look at the study about men, who supposedly think about sex as much as we think about shopping. (I think that once a minute is a but much but I admit it is many times a day.)

"Other studies have previously claimed to uphold the commonly-held belief that young men have only one thing on their minds - sex...They are said to think about it every 52 seconds, while the subject crosses some women's minds only once a day."

I did some half-assed Googling to find this "men think about sex this much, women think about sex that much" study and didn't come up with much -- but fight shoddy research with shoddy research, I say! The best we could do was to find data on the web site of the reputable Kinsey Institite, which says, according to a 14-year-old study, 19% of ladies think about sex everyday or several times a day, 67% think of it a few times per week or month, and 14% think of it less than once a month. That same study found that 54% of men think of sex everyday, while 43% of men think of it a few times per week or month and only 4% think of it less than once a month.

The best part of the article is the piece when a psychologist debunks the whole silly argument:

Discussing the cosmopolitan survey, psychologist Dr Jane Prince, said: 'People think about things which bring them pleasurable feelings. The pleasure is usually in the anticipating and planning.

'But so many women displaying this level of preoccupation, thinking about something once a minute, would indicate widespread addictive behaviour with regard to shopping which really does not seem to be evidenced in any academic literature I have ever seen."

I don't know who is more at fault: web sites that do polls and pass them off as studies, or journalists who utilize polls like studies, but they both have to stop. These tired and old worn out ideas are not realistic anymore. That men are sex-crezed beasts, and that women are shallow and superficial, hmmmm.......it is not really from this time and it will do no one any good and only perpetuate a consumer culture that thrives on fostering women's insecurities and men's sexual prowess. The problem isn't that women think about shopping "too much," or men think about sex "too much", the real problem is that there's an appetite to both read and write stories that hinge on unproven stereotypes. If I look around me I do not know anyone with a shopping addiction and other guys complain about having not enough sex. This is a natural process as man are hunting always for younger women who are ready for reproduction. But somehow most of us learned to nag instead of doing the mating dance.

Hmmm.......to those 575 women who think about shopping every 60 seconds, I hope that one of the purchases that crosses their minds is a vibrator so they can please more then their own needs. Now I'm gonna go to work and think about F***ing once a minute for the rest of the day, you silly, silly newspaper.

The Old Sailor,

Married or Single who is happier?

Dear Bloggers,

Last night I had to work and somehow during a break we talked about relationships of our drivers and pretty quickly I calculated that 85% of my new colleagues either is divorced or is in the middle of the separation process. Staying together with the same partner is getting more and more unique. I can tell you from my own experience that it is a bumpy road, and you have to take it slow not to break it.

You have to live with eachothers mishaps as well

 

Diehard romantics say you can't put a price on love, but a pair of European economists disagrees, the two men calculated the monetary worth of marriage at $100,000 per year. Hmmm......surprises me as I am always out of money. But this given I started digging again to fimd out what is normal nowadays.

Despite the potential payoff, people in Europe are putting off marriage later in life than ever before. In correlation with the rising life expectancy, men and women are giving themselves more time before exchanging vows. The average age for an American woman to get hitched rose from 20.8 to 25.3 from 1970 to 2003. Additionally, more adults are living the single life, thanks in large part to the higher divorce rate. According to data, 90 percent more single-person households existed in 2005 than in 1970.

And they lived..........Scary fairytale

Over the past 30 years, marriage has become more of a social choice than a necessity, but all it takes is a few episodes of "Sex and the City" to see that Western culture still favors cohabitation. Humans' animal instincts are wired for mating in one way or another. Moreover, a pervasive idea exists that discovering a soul mate brings joy and makes life worth living. Perhaps we aren't far off the mark; studies have shown that married people tend to earn more money and live longer than singles. Marriage also appears to promote better health. The study showed that husbands and wives are less likely to smoke or drink heavily, experience frequent headaches and suffer from psychological problems than people who aren't married.

But betting on marriage to bring you happiness may be a risky gamble. After all, the odds of holding on to that perfect partner forever have been whittled down to a coin flip -- about 48 percent of marriages end in divorce. Nevertheless, psychologists have pointed to marriage as the single most reliable happiness indicator. Across nations and ethnic groups, people report greater happiness from marriage than career, community or money. A 2005 survey substantiates these assertions. Forty-three percent of married respondents reported that they were "very happy," compared to 24 percent of unmarried individuals. Those results were consistent for all age groups and genders.

As any good scientist knows, correlation does not always equal causation. To close the case on whether marital bliss trumps the single life, we must deduce which comes first: happiness or marriage?

But what when the Honeymoon ends?
Does marriage make people happier, or do happier people get married?

A study of 24,000 German couples demonstrated the existence of the honeymoon phase that newlyweds experience. Tracking the couples' happiness levels over 15 years, a psychology professor from Michigan State University found that spouses exhibited an uptick in happiness soon after marriage. Then, those happiness levels gradually returned to their premarital state.

The Old Sailors wallet (onion leather, as every time you look in it, you will get tears in your eyes.)

This pattern is comparable to the effects of sudden financial improvement on people's happiness. For people living with relatively low incomes, money can buy happiness for a while. Yet the longer someone gets used to having more cash on hand, the more it loses its luster.

Absolutely........ Ehhr, no comment.

This doesn't negate the survey results that show higher happiness rates among married people. Rather, it has led some psychologists to conjecture that married people are merely more inclined toward happiness since they're happier to begin with. Humans are predisposed to certain happiness ranges depending on their genetics, personality and life circumstances. Also, happier people are generally more social, and it follows that people who actively socialize will be more likely to meet someone they'd like to marry.

As with other major life events, people are inclined to return to their innate happiness baselines as time goes on. The study of German couples found that this holds true even with the death of a spouse. Yet the same psychologist who conducted the initial research concluded that bouncing back to that baseline may be harder following divorce. The participants who went through divorce had a slightly lower level of life satisfaction.

Expectations for marital bliss can also play an important role in determining happiness. A study from the University of Florida highlighted a relationship between the skills that people bring to a marriage and people's anticipation for how much marriage will improve their lives. If partners have overly high expectations for marriage transforming their lives into in a joyous wonderland, they need to have the relationship skills to match. Otherwise, it's like going to a spelling bee expecting first place without ever cracking a dictionary.

As we've learned from happiness surveys, wedding bells can portend happy futures. But happily ever after requires more than an "I do." Marriage won't magically create happiness, which makes personal character development during the single years even more important.

Darn, a good marriage is a lot of hard work.

The Old Sailor,