the shield program ~ bully-proofing our kids helping kids take the mean out of the meaning they give...

The Shield Program ~Bully-Proofing Our Kids

“Helping Kids Take the Mean Out of the Meaning They Give To Words”

Okay, it goes without saying,

but we’ll start by saying it anyway.

Bullying has become epidemic.

And here’s just a few statistics

that might shock even you.

An estimated 160,000 kids miss school every day out of fear of

bullying.

Some drop out of school altogether.

90% of kids in between grades 4 and 8

report to being victims of bullying

And 1 in every 4 teens are bullied every day

43% of them are cyber-bullied even out of school

What’s worse . . .

Suicide has become an all too familiar

tragedy as targeted kids become ever more desperate.

It’s gotten so common, we actually have a name for it now ...

Bully-cide

And Columbine was just the first of many wake up calls for what happens

whenthe victim decides to lash back.

87% of students believe school shootings are motivated by a desire to “get back at those

who have hurt them.”

And keep in mind that the innocentget punished right

along with the ‘guilty’

Kids are afraid to go to school ...

and when they do?

They end coming home in tearsor worse every day

and still aren’t safe because

while at homethey’re being cyber-bullied.

We worry about whether or not

our kids are being bullied

and aren’t telling us.

We all want and need

a solution that works.

And so we wondered ... why?

In spite of all the anti-bully awareness in the media and

all the anti-bullying campaigns ...

Does the problem just keep getting worse?

We believe we have the answer to that question.

In a moment, we’ll reveal the surprising answer ...

But first ...

Consider this important idea

People act in accordance with their beliefs ....

even... if what they believe to be true isn’t.

You may think you knowwhat causes bullying

and what we need to do inorder to make it stop.

But most of what we thinkwe know about how to

stop bullyingis a myth . . .

And, unfortunately, it’s actuallyencouraging the bullying problem

to grow bigger day by day.

Because trying to control or stopsomeone else’s behavior is

a flawed idea.

It only creates more of the problemas it sets us up to play the aggressor

(bully),allows the bully to play the victim,

and ultimately reinforces the causes of

“The Bully/Victim Relationship”

We’re about to revealwhat we believe to be the real causesof bullying and explain why all those

well-meaning anti-bullyingcampaigns have very little effect

on stopping bullying.

.

Later, we’ll tell you what wethink will work and why

But for now . . .

Here Are The Two Hidden But Primary Causes

That Create The Bully/VictimRelationship

Both are False Beliefs

Belief #1

“The World’s Deadliest Belief”

The false belief that

“Other people, events and things are responsible for what I think, feel

and how I behave.”

~and~

Belief # 2

The False Identity Level Belief

“What makes me good enough, important or

acceptable is what other people think of me.”

The Deadly Presupposition Held Within These Beliefs

“In order for me to feel ‘okay’ I must control this, them or you.”

The Bully/Victim RelationshipIs a Struggle to Gain Power OverThe Other In Order to “Be Okay”

“I need to exert power and control over you in order for me to be okay”

“You’re making me feel bad so I expect you to change in order for me to be

okay”

The Victim/Controlled

The Bully/Controller

The Bully/Victim RelationshipIs a Struggle to Gain “Acceptance”

“You offend me, you must change, in order for me to accept you”

“I’m offensive to you, so I must change in order to be acceptable to you”

The Victim/Controlled – Feels Shame

The Bully/Controller – Uses Contempt

“I don’t feel good enough.”

The 11 Reasons Why Anti-Bullying

Campaigns Have Limited Impact

Reason #1

Anti-bullying campaigns are designed around

the presuppositions of boththe “World’s Deadliest Belief and the

Self-Limiting Identity Belief.”

They presuppose that the bully has the

power to make us upset and therefore must be controlled

in order for us to be okay.

~ and ~

They often encourage the victim tominimize his or her contact with

the bully - in other words, minimize their offensiveness to the bully -

so that they will be less of a target.

This approach can send anunintended, yet all the same subtle

message to the victim.

That it is the victim whois the cause of the bully’s behavior.

Advising the bully’s target to stay out of the bully’s way

only further victimizes the victim.

By attempting to stop the bully and protect the victim, these kinds of

programs regrettably reinforce and validate the bully/victim relationship.

Reason #2

They assign power to a bully’s words andassume a victim must be

protected from those words.*

*Physical violence must never be permitted

Reason #3

In attempting to control or stop the bully, these types of programs inadvertently

set up a power struggle with the bully, who now perceives himself as the victim.

The bully will often interpret any attempt to stop their behavior as themselves being

bullied because they perceive this effort

as an attempt by another to dominate them.

And they will fight back (openly or by employing subterfuge) to maintain their position of power and control.

The bully, who now feels cornered, becomes defensive and employs

a powerful justification or excuse.

He pulls out the “he was annoying me” orthe “I was just kidding around”

card, taking the position that the victimis at fault and he himself is

now the victim who is being treatedunfairly and unjustly.

Reason #4

Trying to get the bully to change by lecturing them about how their behavior is causing another to feel,

often fails because ...

It requires them to meet someone else’s expectation of them

in order to be acceptable.

Resistance is almost always inevitable because this puts them in a

win-lose position.

We win, they lose

In order to comply, they have to willingly surrender or lose their autonomyto someone else’s expectation of them.

Further, the appeal for empathy doesn’t work because:

The bully uses contempt to elevate themselves

above the target. That’s what makes them feel

powerful and ‘better than’ their victim.

They would have to abandon this position and

elevate the target (thereby lowering themselves

in the process) in order to express empathy.

~ and ~

With an audiencecheering them on,

getting the reaction from their target is FUN.

That’s one of the biggest reasons they bully to begin with.

Reason #6

By attempting to protect and comfort the victim, we affirm (or make true)

their victim identity by inadvertently reinforcing the position

of the bully as the one who is in a positionto make others feel bad about themselves.

Reason #7

Encouraging students to report incidences of bullying,

resulting in an intervention and punishment of the bully, inevitably

backfires.

The bully can now claim for himself the role of the injured (he’s now a victim) and often retaliates, frequently engaging

an audience to follow along, basedon a commonly held social taboo.*

*kids hate a ‘tattletale.’

This escalates the bully’s behavior as he now feels justified and supported

in punishing the victim for getting him in trouble.

An added benefit of this for the bully is that:

He gets to distance himself from his own behavior by blaming the victim for his troubles.

Reason #8

By placing too much emphasis on sympathy

and support, we may be putting a band-aid on

the victim’s feelings, but it unconsciously validates that the victim should feel badly

about what someone has said to them or about them.

This further reinforces their alreadymistaken belief that the bully’s words actually have the power to hurt them.

Reason #9

The carrot or the stick solutions generated from the outside,

by those whom kids view as authority figures,

are often perceived by themas just another way of

bribing or punishing them to meet some one else’s expectation

of them to be good.

Research shows that this type ofextrinsic motivation has limited

effect on self-sustained* behavioral change.

*Because the kids are not intrinsically motivated to change.

With an emphasis on creating, enactingand enforcing solutions

generated from the outside - rather than by the kids themselves –

anti-bullying programs:

Reason #10

Frequently under-emphasize and fail to use

the things kids value most - acceptance and belonging – and lose a powerful

leverage that would motivate them to want to

change…

~and~

They fail to identify and take advantage of possible bright spots* that already

exist.

*For instance, not all kids are victims. What are the non-victims doing

differently?

Reason #11

By teaching kids to tolerate each other instead of encouraging Active

Acceptance, we emphasize their differences.

Though entirely well-meaning, Embrace Diversity programs are designed to get

kids’ to appreciate and/or tolerate differences and fail

to capitalize on similarities.

Eliminate the Problem by

Challenging and ChangingThe Core Beliefs that Fuel Bullying

What To Do Instead

Big Picture Change #1

“We give meaning to events; we don’t take meaning from events and, therefore,

are capable of changing the meaning.

By changing the meaning, we change our experience.”

New Beliefs

#1 - The World’s Most Empowering and Liberating Belief

The Empowering Presupposition

Held Within This Belief“I created the meaning I have given to an event (for example, someone’s

words aboutme). Therefore, I can change the

meaning.By changing the meaning, I change the

way I feel about the event.”

# 2 - Self-Empowered Identity Level Belief

“What makes me good enough, important or

acceptable has nothing to do withwhat other people think of me.”

The Empowering Presupposition

Held Within This Belief

“Other people don’t define meor make me acceptable

or for that matter ...anything else.”

Enable students to be intrinsically motivated to treat each other with

dignity and respect by engaging with them through

Mindopoly’s Cooperative Engagement Model

Big Picture Change #2

Mindopoly’s Cooperative Engagement Model

By Declaring a Common or Shared WantEach Person Becomes Cooperative In Creating It

For Themselves and Others

CommonWant

Acceptance

What I’ll doWhat I’ll do

What I’ll do

What I’ll doWhat I’ll do

What I’ll do

What I’ll do

Want

Want

Want

Want

Want

Want

Want

Want

Each saying, “Because I want this

here’s what I expect of myself”

Personal Accountability in the Creation

of Common Values/Wants

Which Leads To

IntrinsicMotivation

Self-Empowerment

Self-Accountability

Fosters Change ByEngaging Personal:

Autonomy Mastery Purpose

Based on Edward L Deci’s

seminal research on what truly motivates

us

The Shield Program’s Core Principles

Principle #1

Empower Our Kids With New Beliefs:

Belief #1

“Self-Empowerment Belief”

“I am responsible for what I think, feel and how I behave.”

~and~

Belief # 2

The Positive Identity Level Belief

“What makes me good enough, important or

acceptable has nothing to do withwhat other people think of me.”

These two powerful, self-affirmative andself-empowering beliefs enable kidsto think and feel about themselves

and each other in a waythat supports and keeps intact

everyone’s autonomy and dignity.

When both are accepted as true, the following becomes true as well:

“I am the one who gives meaning and importance to other

people’s words and actions.

All meaning and importance comes from me . . . not to me.

Because I control the meaning, I am always in control of how other

people’s words and behavior affect me.”

This presupposes:

That no one else’s behavior and/or words, however

contemptuous or unpleasant,ever mean anything about us.

~ and ~

That no one else’s words have any power to make

anyone feel anything.

We do not need to control anyonein order for us to be okay.

Nor do we need any one else’s acceptance of us

in order to define our self as okay.

This eliminates the need to engage in a power struggle to control anyone.

(Remember legislating against bullying behavior

only provokes a counter-attack.)

A Bully achieves a feeling of power and superiority by creating a false inferior.

But ... he first needs to identify a potential target.

His perfect target is someone whois being unconsciously held captive by

both #1 The World’s Deadliest Belief

and #2 has a False Identity Belief.

The Bully’s initial weapon of choice (what he’ll use to qualify a victim)

is what he says to the target ... his ‘verbal bullets.’

In order for him to elevate himself, he first needs a cooperative victim,

unconsciously willing to give power to these bullets.

Without the bullets, the bully iscompletely powerless even though

he tries to take aim.

By teaching kids how to strip the meaning from words, we empower them to de-victimize themselves and

disempower the ability of the bully to use words as weapons.

The bully’s contemptuouswords are useless against

anyone who understands this principle.

The illusion of the bully’s power to make his potential victim feel

inferior to him (by using his own words) or to anyone else (by using gossip) is lost.

#1

Although often preceded by verbal bullying, any physical violence

(for instance: punching, shoving, restraining or pushing of another student) must be seen as a zero tolerance event

~ and ~

Two Important Distinctions

There must be effective interventions and no tolerance policies

that quickly make the offender responsiblethrough an immediate consequence to that

offender.

For instance: banning themfrom participating in activities that

elevate their social status (i.e., team sports)and/or removing them from the school

altogether.

#2

In any case where a studentsustains any kind of bodily harm orphysical stalking/menacing, it must

be seen as a criminal assault, rather thanbeing mislabeled as a bullying incident.

Principle #2

Motivating Kids Through Cooperative Engagement

How do we get kids to want for themselveswhat we want for them?

Appeal to what they already want ...

Acceptance

Think about it ...

Which would you rather be?

Accepted?

Or simply ... tolerated?

And how much external pressure is required when you truly feel self-motivated toward

doing or getting something you already want ...

especially when you know you have someone else’s help . . .

because they want it too.

Does anyone have to convince you to want what you already want for yourself?

Getting kids to identifya common want, encouraging them tothink about how they would be willing

to act in order to get their want met, andhelping them to create ways they could use to support each other

to create an environment of Active Acceptanceis a powerful first step

to transforming the “silent majority”into Change Agents.

We all want to be accepted for who we already are.

We don’t need to teach this to kidsbecause it’s an innate desire they already have.

By engaging our kids’ natural motivation toward what they already want and giving them a way that they can actively create it together,

we don’t need to legislate their behavior

Mindopoly’s Cooperative Engagement Model has a unique advantage over Anti-Bullying Models

because it capitalizes on our kids’ natural desire to have:

Autonomy:

They are each, individually, in control of their own choice and in their

ability to set a personal expectation of themselves

about how they will go about creating what they said they wanted for themselves.

Mastery

This model provides everyone with the ability tomaster the art of how to develop true personal

power through choice, self-control and self-accountability

and learn how working together toward acommon goal to create it is far

superior than waiting for someone toprovide it for you.

Purpose

This model gives kids a common, highly desirable, self-achievable,

yet shared vision that will intrinsically motivate them ....

far beyond what we could impose upon them.

Acceptance immediately sets a ‘same frame’

Because of the following truism:

“You are the same as me because you want to be accepted too.”

Kids become self-regulating.

And by encouraging solutions generated by kids for kids, we encourage self-

accountability.

As each of them says,

“I want this and this is my expectation of myself to create that for myself.”

“So here’s what you can expect of me.”

This encourages kids to trusteach other as they come together

to create what they all want.

Principle #3

Taking a Pledge to Become “The Shield”

Create ‘The Shield’ by mobilizinga no longer silent majoritymade up of an supportive

community of parents, teacher,administrators, counselors and students.

Instead of Trying ToControl Kids to Move Away

From a Not Want(Stop Bullying or Anti-Bullying)

We Focus Most of OurEnergy In Creating and Sustaining

a Positive Move Toward What We Do Want

By Creating an Entire Social Campaign

We can start by holding a contest for the best Graphic Design for our Program’s “First Shield”

(The kids’ popular vote wins)

Then ...

By sparking in all kids, includingwould-be bullies, their natural competitive

desire to lead and be respected,encourage them to create their own:

Personalized Brand Name and Graphic for an Individual Shield for Their School

Collaborate with students to create an entire in-school campaignwith arm bands, t-shirts, etc.

Asking them to come up with tag-lines ...

(“The only label I wear is on the inside of this shirt”)

Encourage the older kidsto create fun, provocative, kid-inspired

“The Shield Program” videos that could easily go viral.

Hold a contest for theBest “The Shield” Videos submitted

by each grade and school

Engage the more technical kids to work with adults in our communityto create a phone app that easily

lets kids reach outif they become a cyber or text target.

Something that would easily enableanyone to show support

using social media and texting to create ‘a shield’ for the victim

by lending an affirmation of acceptance.

This means an act of “Active Acceptance” the minute something negative gets

posted or texted by creatingan avalanche of support:

“Hey, I don’t think this is true about you. This is just one person’s opinion.

It doesn’t mean anything about you.”

Essentially ‘drowning out’ the bully or bullies.

By working with kids, we can identify possible

bright spots* that already exist and can be taken advantage of.

*What’s working already?

Principle #4

Teach Kids How To UseReflective and Re-directive Language Skills

and Avoid Becoming a Target

There are effective ways of conversationally

disengaging a bully’s attempt to gain power over, control or manipulate.

This may serve to eliminate the escalation of bullying (both cyber and

physical)as they are most often preceded by

verbal bullying.

Here are just two examples of howknowing what to say

can thwart a bully withoutcreating a confrontation.

What To Say: Example # 1

Bullies love to ‘bait’ with questions.

Don’t take the bait.

If you think you’re being baited, answer a question with a question.

Use some version of:

“I’m curious, why do you ask?”

This not only frustrates the bully’s attempt to bait you, it puts them in the

position of having to explain their motivation

for asking the question in the first place.

What To Say: Example # 2

Bullies love to throw a ‘zing’ to seeif it has a desired effect.

You can also use a question frame to create and send a message of

a non-defensive, so what? attitude toward the comment.

“I’m curious, why did you just say that?”

or

“I’m curious, do you really think that?”

Again, this reflects the commentback to the bully and requires

him to have to answer the would-be target’s

question, which forces him to examine and own his intention.

.

Turning the energy back to the bullyis a very effective way of answering

without having to lash back,become defensive or try to ignore it.

Principle #5

Work With the School toCreate Active Acceptance Zones

In Places Kids Congregate

The School Library

Benches on Outside Grounds

An Open Community Room

Lunch Tables

Areas become clearly marked as Active Acceptance Zones

with The Shield Logo design of the schoolprominently displayed upon them

This minimizes any guesswork that kids have to make when kids

seek to socially engage with other kids.

They no longer have to question or become anxious

about whether ornot they’ll be accepted or fit in.

Because Active Acceptance Zoneslet everyone know they do fit in

and anyone can take an active role in helping others to feel welcome too.

This strips the bully of the powerto shun or exclude anyone by

using the school’s social structurefor his own purposes.

Turning the Tables:

If students and staff ensure the ratio of tables

in the cafeteria with The Shield far exceed the number without them - making this the new norm - it redefines those who choose to sit in cliques to now be regarded as the

un-cool outliers.

And this is just the beginning.

Together, we outnumberthe bullies who are

themselves suffering fromthe “Deadliest Belief” and operating

under their misguided attempts to gain

power and control.

We can engage and‘convert’ the bullies into

taking a positive leadershipposition ...

and abandon thenegative, abusive one they are

presently using to gainpower, control, respect

and

Yes ... acceptance!

Ask yourself,

“What would happen if every one of usembraced and made ‘true’

The Shield Program’s Core Beliefs.

To refresh your memory here they are again

Belief #1

“Self-Empowerment Belief”

“I am responsible for what I think, feel and how I behave.”

~and~

Belief # 2

Self-Empowered Identity Level Belief

“What makes me good enough, important or

acceptable has nothing to do withwhat other people think of me.”

If you’re as excited as weare about the answer to that question ....

Here’s what You can do – right now

Show Your Support

Register and Add Your Nameto The Shield Pledge

(we’ll keep you informedand share valuable informationabout how you can participate

and make a difference)

~ and ~

Then watch Mindopoly’s Jim Cervellonispeaking at this year’s FlourCity TEDx

”The World’s Deadliest Belief”

Make sure to leave a comment, like and/or share. Together we

can make a difference.

“We give meaning to events; we don’t take meaning from events and, therefore, are capable of changing the meaning.”

By changing the meaning, we change our experience.

And Remember . . .