Monday, March 22, 2010
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Mike Dreiblatt
- www.standuptobullying.net
- Manchester Center, Vermont, United States
- Mike Dreiblatt teaches students, school staff and parents how to stop bullying. Balance Educational Services is the leader in bullying prevention offering workshops and presentations for students, school staff and parents. Using role-playing and audience participation.
How to Stop Bullying and Social Aggression
To purchase book, please click image of cover
Listen to Our Podcast Interview
Steve and Mike discuss their new book "How to Stop Bullying and Social Aggression"
2 comments:
As a child, I was hazed, verbally, and physically harrassed by both children my own age and older. Time and again I was given the advice to either ignore, walk way from, or turn the other cheek in cases of verbal harrassment. However, on more than one occasion, turning my back lead to an escalation of the bullying into physical form when the harrassers did not get the desired result. The result was I led a life of isolation and seclusion, fearing contact with many of my peers. Often, even being the new kid in school where no one yet knew me, I still experienced violence, as if these children, like wild animals, could somehow sense my fear and apprehension. From grade school to graduation, teachers and administrators alike prompted my reports of bullying and hazing with the question "well, what did YOU do to provoke this confrontation?" Also, I was often met with abject disbelief, and often was given the exuse that "Well, no one does things like you describe- unprovoked- so you MUST have done SOMETHING to cause this behavior." I began to lash out against people and especially adults who never seemed to trust that I was telling the truth. I have and continue to deal with serious trust issues and feelings of inferiority, despite constant verbal affirmation by those close to me...it never seems to be enough to cover up the hurt and pain from a traumatic childhood that also included a broken home and "dysfunctional" parents who were too wrapped up in their own issues to care about me on a real, personal level. I still feel resentful of people who are considered "popular" because I often feel their success in society is unwarranted because many of these people were cruel, hateful children who are now conniving and self-centered adults.
School administrators simply brushed my concerns with bullies under the proverbial rug, even when near-adult aged students physically assaulted me both on-campus and off. I was even followed, blocked into a parking space at a local mall, and verbally harrassed by two females who had been students at my high school AFTER having graduated. Had I not locked myself inside the car, I might have been beaten by these hateful young women. To this day, I honestly have no idea what I did to them to provoke this incident and others by them, or why they hated me so much. This took place in Hardin County Schools in Kentucky, which, supposedly has very high standards for confronting the bullying issue now (but certainly not in the late 1990s!) I continue to lie about where I attended high school on job applications and do not acknowledge that I ever lived in Kentucy due to the severity of my experiences while attending school in the state. I have since moved away, ironically enough to a northern state with no laws against bullying.
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Thanks,
Overcome Bullying
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