Turning bullies into buddies.

• Author: Kalman, Izzy
• Position: Adopting anti-bullying policies in schools

ISN'T IT WONDERFUL? The country has declared war on bullies! Schools all over the country are adopting anti-bullying policies and soon all kids will be able to go to school without fear of bullies. Good luck with that.

Do you have two or more children? If so, there is a very good chance that they bully each other every day, perhaps even all day long, and all your efforts to stop them are useless. If you cannot stop your own offspring from bullying one another, can you really expect one teacher to get 20 or 30 kids to stop doing it?

Often, school anti-bullying policies actually intensify the bullying among students while turning educational institutions into law enforcement agencies. The teachers have to do investigations into incidents. (In most cases, no one is even hurt.) Parents do not like to have their child accused of being a bully, so they tend to take his or her side against the other child. Before long, two or more sets of parents are fighting each other. Parents often blame teachers for doing nothing to stop the bullying, and teachers often defend themselves by blaming the parents for raising aggressive kids. Distraught principals then find themselves in the rotten situation of playing judge--not only between kids, but angry adults as well.

The following generally is what happens when grownups try to make youngsters stop fighting. Let's say you are my classmate and you hit me. I tell the teacher and you get punished. Does that make you like me? No. Does it make you like the teacher? No. Instead, it makes you hate both of us. You want to get even. So, you will look for the next opportunity to hit me again, and you will want to do it even harder than before, or you will try to get me in trouble with the teacher. Meanwhile, the teacher thinks she is making us stop fighting. She does not realize she is making us continue fighting. This process is identical when parents get in the middle of the squabbles between siblings at home.

So, be careful what you wish for. If you want the government to hold schools legally responsible for stopping the bullying among students, the next step may be to hold you responsible for stopping the bullying that goes on with your kids at home.

If you are waiting for the schools to make other kids stop bullying your child, your son or daughter may stay a victim for a very long time. Yet, if adults cannot stop youngsters from being bullied, who can? There is only one person in the world who can perform that...