This radio/YouTube interview (Confession Tuesday, 1-14-14) features life coach Rebeccah Silence discussing bullying—particularly among schoolchildren—and practical responses. Silence frames bullying as a widespread issue affecting children and adults, distinguishes destructive communication styles (bulldozer, doormat) from assertive empowerment, and gives concrete advice: praise children for reporting, teach assertive communication, identify adult resources (teachers, counselors, administrators), and pursue school-based interventions. She also notes her background as a former school counselor and offers programs for schools via InspiredResultsCoach.com.
Inspired results. Coach.com is the website, and what you do is you tell us what's going on in your world, and we handle it free and confidentially right here on the radio. One thing I want to. I want to talk to you about, and it's come up, not necessarily in my life, but in, like, people around me, children having issues with bullying in schools. And this is. And this is something that's really. It really is something that. It seems like it's happening an awful, awful lot. I mean, you know, you and I both had to deal with it when, you know, when we were going, you know, when we were growing up. And now that there's actually, like, a word for it or a phrase for it. And sometimes children are going to extremes because of, you know, in reaction to. Because of how they feel, because of the bullying.
This is.
I mean, this is. This is some serious stuff.
This is absolutely serious. And I'm going to suggest it doesn't just apply to kids in schools. Bullying happens to adults. Bullying happens all over the place. And I believe it affects every single one of us.
I'll agree to that. Absolutely.
So it isn't even just our kids. And in my experience, the kids are just learning from their parents. The kids are just modeling what they've seen done by the adults in their lives. So one of the things that I teach, I actually am gonna be doing a teacher in service at Donovan Middle School tomorrow. I go into Donovan monthly. All year, I'm working on bullying with the kids. I'm working teachers and the parents. And what I do is I teach the difference between being a bulldozer who's extremely aggressive, being a doormat who's extremely passive, and then being just an assertive communicator that's confident and empowered, knowing how to communicate in a way that respects other people. That I think is the best bully prevention out there. Learning how to be empowered and learning how to communicate. Learning how to communicate and know your resources for kids.
Absolutely. As far as. As far as children go. And I want to. I want to focus on. On the. On the. On the kid aspect of it, because a lot of times kids who are dealing with it don't necessarily know how to communicate. You know, granted, there are adults. You know. You know, there are some adults that don't know how to communicate at times, but kids, because they've never dealt with stuff like that before, and, you know, they're afraid that they'll get in trouble for, you know, for talking about it or having it happen or they should you know what I'm saying? And it's. It's a tough thing to be a child and be in the middle of it. If you're a parent of a child and you find out that your child's being bullied and. And whatnot, what's a good. What's a good route to go? Because, I mean, because if you're a parent and you see your child and your child finally comes to you and says, yes, this is happening, it almost feels like you're helpless in some way, shape or form.
Absolutely. And again, we are focusing on the kids, but I want to point out that if your child is being bullied, they have learned not to stand up for themselves at home. That's where it starts. So when we're parents, right, Number one, if you won't stand up for you, you could tell your kids to stand up for themselves all day long. But if you won't stand up for you and they're not watching or learning how to do that, they won't know how. They won't. So it's so important that in your own lives, all parents are taking good care of themselves and they're making sure they're respecting themselves and standing up for themselves. Now, if your kid comes to you talking about this, first of all, I would praise them for being brave enough to tell you that's so important, because a lot of times kids just keep it inside and they don't let you know.
Right. Until it comes to a severe, severe.
Right. You know, So I would be encouraging them. There is nothing you can do to make me love you less. I'm so proud of you. Of course we can get to the bottom of this. You know, I had a family last year working with me that had some pretty severe stuff going on. The. The daughter was on a sports team, and the entire team was ganging up on her. Administration was just kind of looking the other way, and we dealt with it. And this little girl now, she is absolutely talking about how she learned how to communicate. She learned how to stand up for herself. She had a successful experience on the team this year, and. And things got addressed. So there are ways to deal with this and to handle it if it's happening. You got to learn who your resources are. You've got to get support for your child. Number one, administration will do something if they know about it. If people don't know, there's nothing they can do. Absolutely nothing. A lot of times schools only have one counselor. The counselor can't know what's happening. All around the building. So teachers communicating what's going on with administration and counselors is really important, but people have to know if they're gonna do anything. So I don't believe the stigma that it'll get worse if people find out. Only if we aren't willing to follow through on doing anything about it.
Correct.
It's so important that we stand up and say, hey, this is what's going on and it's unacceptable.
Local life coach Rebecca Silence inspired results coach dot com. If you are. If you're a child right now and you're listening to this and you are scared to say anything to anyone but it's happening to you, what would be a good route?
Yeah. So the first thing I want everyone listening to understand is people are not gonna treat you better than you treat yourself. So if you won't stand up for yourself, I get you might be scared, but you're teaching people they get to do this to you. So I want everyone to value themselves enough. Where you have your own zero tolerance policy, where you're saying, I'm worth more than this. No way. No way.
And when we say stand up for yourself, we're not talking like, you know, fight people. Right? There's a difference.
Yeah, you read my mind. So it's so funny because that's exactly where I wanted to go. Being a bulldozer, being aggressive and trying to scare someone into not being a jerk, that makes you the bully now, right? And you've given away your power to this person. That's what I want everybody to get. When you're aggressive, you're actually powerless because you are at the effect of these people. You are out of control because of them. That is not power, and that is not something people are going to respect. They might scare you, they won't respect you, and you're only making the situation worse. And then being a doormat, just letting people step on you. And that's what it is. If you're a doormat, you are letting them do this to you. And you do not have to ever so aggressive bulldozers and passive doormats, either way, you're powerless, right? So what I want you to get is that you're worth more. Own that and don't put up with it. Don't put up with it for a second. And if you're a kid, get some adults, get to know who your resources are. Talk to a teacher, talk to your counselor, Talk to a principal or an assistant principal, say, hi, this is going on. I don't like it. And I need your help. Let's tackle this together, because no kid deserves to be put down. No kid deserves to feel like they're not safe. No one. I don't care who you are. No one's better than anybody else. Kids, I hope you understand that. No one is better than you. You're not better than anyone. And we all deserve to be treated with respect.
Local life coach Rebecca Silence Inspired results. If you're listening from a school right now and want to have Rebecca come and do a program, you absolutely could do.
So they might not know is I was a school counselor for six years. I was a school counselor, a school counseling coordinator when I lived in Vegas. You've seen it, I've seen it all.
Been right in there.
I've got programs and I just am so passionate about the fact that if we won't respect ourselves, we can't teach our kids to respect themselves. And even if kids haven't seen it, you can learn how to respect yourself.
Inspired ResultsCoach.com is the website more on a confession Tuesday with Rebecca Silence coming up on KISS fm.
