Bullying Epidemic

Book excerpt: Bullying Epidemic: Not Just Child's Play is a powerful new book on children s bullying and the corrosive, enabling role adults inadvertently play. Why is bullying still a growing crisis, after a decade of bullying prevention programs? Bullying Epidemic looks clearly at the self-serving excuses adults make for failing to step in and stop bullying, and the tremendous human cost of looking away while our kids are suffering. Caught early, bullying is easily stopped. Unchallenged, bullying becomes impossibly complex, with no rewind button, leaving permanent emotional scars and, too frequently, costing children their lives. No law can provide consolation or damage repair for parents who ve lost children to suicide. All of us are damaged by the roles we play bully, target, and, most frequently, bystander. Adults must reclaim our roles as leaders to children, clean up the bullying in adult workplaces, in our personal lives, and on TV. We must unwaveringly insist that kids do the same. Kids should know that every day is bullying prevention day not just when cameras are rolling or the bullying prevention expert is in the school. Bullying Epidemic offers a commonsense action plan for all adults determined to turn the tide of children s bullying. Lorna Blumen is an educational consultant and bullying prevention specialist. Author of Girls Respect Groups: An Innovative Program To Empower Young Women & Build Self-Esteem!, she has appeared on Canadian and U.S. television and radio.