Blog For A Cause: Bullying by Guest Writer Caroline Ambros

I am sorry for such the delayed posting of the next blog post for my Blog For A Cause series. As with many people, life took over and distractions began to tear me away from my hobbies.

Nonetheless, I am happy to reintroduce the series with this post by Caroline Ambros on bullying. Read her incite on how bullying really feels:

           "From what I can tell, everyone has their own bullying story, and ultimately they all boil down to a similar tale. One of the more manipulative kids started picking on you. Initially, it wasn’t a big deal, so you did nothing. But it got worse, and worse. Still, you said nothing because no kid wants to be a snitch. Eventually, though, it got so bad that you told your parents, who in turn strong-armed you into telling the teacher. Mrs. Smith was sympathetic, of course, and she said that she would do whatever she could to stop it.

Your bully was usually not stupid. He or she knew you’d spoken to Mrs. Smith, so the bully was extra careful. They never did anything within her eyesight. That way, no matter how much Mrs. Smith wanted to help you, she couldn’t. You can’t punish a child for something you can’t prove they did. So nothing was done.

In most stories I’ve heard, the bully eventually gets bored. They either move on to new victims, or reform themselves into better people as they become less insecure. That’s not how my bully story ends, though. No matter what I did, she never seemed to grow tired of me, and she never seemed to change.

After years of struggling with how to make it stop, she eventually did disappear from my life. While those years were at times very hard, I believe that I’m stronger for having experienced them. No child should have to go through what I went through, but personally I don’t have very much confidence that schools will ever truly figure out how to stop bullying before it starts.

Therefore, I am going to pass along the secret to my survival, a revelation that I did not have until well into my experience being bullied. The names you are being called are not a reflection on you at all, but a reflection on the bully. In these situations, it is not the victim that is the weak one. Keep that in mind, and hold your head high."

Begin the fight to end bullying TODAY. Every day people of all ages are physically, mentally, and emotionally put down. When is enough, enough?