This is an important topic and deserves an extra distribution boost. The blogger and the author are both personal friends and colleagues in the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club, I welcome the opportunity to give their message extra air time.
Bullying has been around as long as there have been people, but it is not an inevitable condition that we as a society have to give in to. New approaches are starting to make headway as schools and parents tackle this issue that will not go away.
Last week I attended a book launch at Laurel Books for The Bullying Antidote: Superpower Your Kids for Life, written by my friend Kristen Caven and her mother, Dr. Louise Hart. It was a warm, muggy night in Oakland, so the door was opened in Luan’s cozy little bookshop to allow the occasional breeze to provide some relief. A small but engaged audience of parents and teachers listened to the authors present ideas based on both science and experience.
Hart is a community psychologist who has studied school environments and is an expert in self-esteem development. Caven is a writer who is actively involved in the parent association…
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A Year on the Road 
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Having taught pre school for 26 years, I felt that the most important skill I could teach was sensitivity to others. Make children aware of the feelings, the hurt that is caused by cruel words and actions- going back to the old Golden Rule that we all grew up with. Somehow, some parents ignore that important part of parenting. We can be civil, after all- and I am so glad to know that public schools have enforced a “bullying” program with consequences at last. The most irrational saying out there is “Kids will be kids” at the cost of children suffering. How hard can it be, to be nice, be nice, be nice???
Thank you, AL, for the buzz! It was great to do our “pre-launch” with the club, and to have Tanya attend our first bookstore appearance.
Your first commenter hits the nail on the head with the Golden Rule. In the book, we have a whole list of things parents say that doesn’t help, and “kids will be kids” is sure on it! Isn’t it interesting how the POLICE are the ones who most support universal funding for pre-school right now? Because that’s the #1 predictor that kids won’t be on the streets. Because that’s where they start learning to “use their words, not their fists.”
Your comment about the importance of early childhood education on violence in the community strikes a harmonic chord in my mind. In the mid-1960s I worked as a Research Associate in the Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction. At that time the Department was heavily involved in initiating and developing early Head Start Programs around the state, since educational and psychological research clearly supported the efficacy of the programs in promoting learning and human development. Thus in the late 60s and early 70s Head Start projects around the country grew logarithmically with resources committed initially by President Johnson’s legislation supporting his declared “War on Poverty.” Beginning in the late 70s and continuing with each advancing decade through the present day, however, support for the programs slowly declined.
Hopefully, your book can help to kindle a grass roots recognition that children are not born miniature adults and that left to their own devices they may very easily create a world that resembles the one described by William Golding in his classic book Lord of the Flies.
Ha ha, that reminds me off when I first moved to Oakland and sat in a peace or circle and someone asked, “Why can’t we all just love each other like little children?” I thought she was crazy and asked, “have you ever been around children?”
Children are lovable, wonderful beings, but only if they are taught its okay to love and show love. So many kids are raised to be purely competitive. This book talks a lot about primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Thanks for your great comments!
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The bloggers have started talking!
I would also love to see the War on Poverty re-declared. Bush 1 renamed it the War on Drugs and lost it.
For me at least, it is an interesting paradox that we use the metaphor “war” to describe our efforts to reduce violence and poverty. As psychoanalysts such as Freud and Jung argued, humans may be by nature aggressive creatures who must learn to control their native propensity toward acting violently toward their fellows.