The Essential Guide to Bullying

Book excerpt: Headlines are filled with tragic stories of senseless murders and suicides that have resulted from child and teen bullying. As social networking and technology add to the ways that kids can be bullied, parents feel powerless against this insidious force that compels even "good" kids to participate in or enable bullying in schools, in extracurricular activities, online, and at home. The Essential Guide to Bullying Prevention and Intervention brings together the wisdom and experience of two people who have witnessed bullying's causes and tragic effects. School social worker Cindy Miller teams with Cynthia Lowen, the co-creator of Bully, to arm parents and teachers with the knowledge they need to: • Understand the societal and human forces that are causing bullying to escalate. • Discover who is most at risk for being bullied, being a bully, or not helping a bullying victim. • Target-proof their kids and teach them coping skills. • Identify even the most covert bullying situations. • Infiltrate the world of cyberbullying and head off its disastrous effects. • Intervene to stop a bullying situation. • Know what legal recourse they have to back up other anti-bullying efforts.