Three Cheers for "That Girl in Pink""

When Benni Cinkle was 13, she appeared in a YouTube music video that went viral, receiving over 200 million views.  At first, Benni was ridiculed by millions around the world for her awkward dancing, often referred to as “That girl in pink that can’t dance.”  They called her names and told her she should kill herself. A few of the printable names she was called were “lame, terrible, awkward, horrible, stupid, freak, loser, awful, worthless, annoying, fat and ugly, dumb.”  Other comments included, “She should probably look into suicide,” “Please just die” and “I’ll bet she wants to kill herself now.”

Did she let the jerks drag her down?   Did she lose her self-esteem and get depressed?  Did she commit suicide?

No.  Benni was a target, but she was not a victim!

Instead of reacting defensively, Benni didn’t take it personally.  She kept her spirits up.  She met their criticism with humor, honesty and understanding.  She was open and didn’t hide.  Soon, anonymous cyber bullies became fans and Benni's online reputation as an approachable, down-to-earth teen began to grow.  In the months following her unexpected popularity, Benni received tens of thousands of requests for advice from teens around the world.

Realizing she had been gifted with a platform that offered international reach, Benni decided to use her 15 minutes of fame for something positive. So she:

• Started “That Girl in Pink Foundation” as a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention of teen suicide.  TGIP focuses on any issue that may directly or indirectly lead to teen suicide, including: Teen Depression, Bullying, Cyber-Bullying, Teen Self-Mutilation, Teen Gay/Lesbian Support, Child Violence, Sexual Abuse, Teen Dating Violence, Eating Disorders and Teen Pregnancy.
• Authored “That Girl in Pink’s Internet Survival Guide,” offering teens strategies for handling life online.
• Organized a flashmob dance to raise donations for American Red Cross Japan Earthquake Relief.
• Organized a walk for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation that included hundreds of kids from 14 countries walking with her, virtually.
• Recorded her single, “Can You See Me Now,” and donated profits to TWLOHA and GLSEN.
• Visited schools across the U.S. delivering her “Don’t Just Stand There” anti-bullying presentation.

Let’s hear three cheers for Benni!

Find her at www.thatgirlinpink.org.  Invite her to speak at your school.  She’ll help you stand up to cyber bullies and stop bullying in its many forms.  She’ll inspire students to become defenders instead of remaining merely bystanders.

Inept, Unskilled or Over-Protective Mothers Sabotage Daughters

Inept, unskilled or over-protective mothers sabotage their daughters. Almost all the women who’ve interviewed me on radio and TV or who’ve called in with comments have said that their mothers told them to rise above mean girls, to be nicer and kinder to bullies, to be nice because the mean girls were being bullied at home, to feel sorry for the bullies because they had low self-esteem or to simply forgive mean girls as a spiritual thing to do.

That’s bad advice; those methods don’t stop real-world bullies and mean girls.  Those mothers trained their daughters to be easy targets and victims.  Those grown daughters still bear the wounds and scars of being hurt and victimized while not being allowed or knowing how to defend themselves.

In addition, some over-protective mothers said that they’re home-schooling their daughters because they were bullied at school.  There are many good reasons to home-school children, but I think that’s not one of them.

The number one cause of daughters being bullied repeatedly and then growing up to be bullied adults in relationships and at work is well-meaning mothers who are philosophically opposed to fighting back verbally or physically or who are inept or unskilled at stopping bullies.  They make bullying a multi-generational problem by not teaching their daughters effective skills and techniques to stop bullies.

Of course we don’t throw our children into deep water and risk their drowning.  First, we teach them how to swim.  Everything I say also relates to fathers and sons.

So what can mothers do?

• If you’re fearful and protect your daughters in a cocoon, you’ll create problems for them when they grow up. Don’t make being a victim into a multi-generational problem.  The fear they sense will lead them to think they’re weak, fragile and incompetent.  They’ll develop anxiety and low self-confidence and self-esteem.  They’ll be naïve and unskillful and, therefore, easy prey for abusers and predators in their adult love life, with friendships and at work.
• Accept that you must educate and train your daughters to stop bullies skillfully. They won’t be able to function successfully in the real-adult world if you let them think that the whole universe is a safe place; that if they’re nice and loving all people will be nice to them in return; that treating people according to the Golden Rule will get kindness and consideration back; that they’ll be more spiritual if they forgive and rise above harassment and abusive behavior.
• Teach your daughters that the real-world has predators and also teach them how to recognize bullies. Overt bullies are easy to recognize.  Also, teach them the early warning signs of stealthy, covert bullies and mean girls.
• Teach your daughters how to stop school bullies individually – verbally and physically. Predators will misinterpret their kindness and offers of friendship as weakness and an invitation to abuse them more.  Teach your daughters techniques of increasing firmness to get bullies to stop or to get away from them.  Teach them how to rally their friends to help them.
• Teach your daughters how to get adult help from you, school officials and police. Convince them that you can help if they’re targeted by cyber-bullies or if they witness cyber-bullying.
• Be a model. Become skillful in stopping the bullies in your life – at home, at work, as a customer and in the school system.  Learn how to rally and support good principals and teachers, and how to make reluctant administrators protect your daughter.

If you’re over-protective or if you try to ignore, minimize or appease bullies, you’ll teach your daughter to do the same.  And she’ll grow up to feel just as helpless as you do.

Do better for your daughter.  Remember all the women who interviewed me and the mixed feelings they now have about their mothers.

There are many examples of children and adults stopping bullies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids.”  Or call me at 877-8BULLIES (877-828-5543) to teach you how to help yourself and your daughter.

Sexting, Harassment, Bullying and Suicide: Is the Solution More Laws?

When the parents of teenage suicide Jessica Logan called for new laws to stop “sexting,” and said that the school was responsible for stopping their daughter and her ex-boy friend and the other bullies who continued harassing her, the focus of discussion shifted from sadness about her suicide to the question of what to regulate and how to regulate it. Should we have new laws to prevent people from texting nude pictures of themselves?  Should schools be the forced to stop the practice?

As much as I feel for Jessica and her parents, they’re calling for the wrong methods to try to stop sexting.  We shouldn’t have laws to stop self-sexting and schools should not be held responsible for stopping it.  Either of those paths are over-reactions to the emotions in one situation.  They’ll lead to morasses and a huge waste of time and money.

The first problem was with what Jessica did.  The solutions to that problem don’t begin with laws.  The solutions begin at home.  Whatever the family dynamic was, Jessica sent the pornographic pictures of herself to her boy friend.  She didn’t have the sense to look ahead.  She’s not the first, nor will she be the last teenager to do something foolish with a boyfriend.  And he’s not the first, nor will he be the last ex-boyfriend who strikes back by talking or texting about his ex-girlfriend.  Of course, ex-girlfriends also have a long history of doing rotten things to their ex-boyfriends.

That problem is between Jessica and her parents.  Do you really think that any seventeen year-old girl hasn’t heard that she should be careful about what she sends in digital form, especially to boys?  Except for the ease and speed of transmission, that’s no different from someone, a hundred years ago, giving a hard copy of nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriend.  If someone wants to be that dumb, we can’t stop them, anymore than societies have ever been able to stop sex before marriage.

Teenagers have free will.  Could any of us stop our teenagers from doing all the things we thought were dangerous?  Our six teenagers taught us the futility of that attempt.  Could our parents have stopped us completely?

Beyond a short talk about the dangers of exposing yourself in public, schools shouldn’t get more involved.  We don’t need extensive and expensive educational programs.

A second issue is the ex-boyfriend’s sending pornographic pictures of someone else, and the subsequent harassment by cyber bullies, especially mean girls.  His actions and those of all the other nasty, cyber bullying girls and boys who passed around Jessica’s nude pictures, trashed her on Facebook, IM’d her and ruined her reputation can be made illegal.  This situation also illustrates the truism that means girls can be much more vicious than boys.

That’s different from the previous generation’s passing around published “Playboy” centerfolds, where the women had given permission to be seen by everyone.

This is a personal tragedy for the Logan family, but ruined reputations are an age old phenomenon and this problem was started by the person in the middle, Jessica, not by the paparazzi.  Our popular culture is no worse than most popular cultures have been, especially during times of opulence, extravagance and excess.  You can’t legislate morals successfully in such a time.

Our task as individual parents is still the same; to try to talk some sense and caution into our children and teenagers’ heads.  And many of them won’t listen and will learn their lessons the hard way.

I’m sorry Jessica didn’t have the inner strength and resilience to resist the bullying and harassment, and to move on beyond the loss of her reputation.  I hope the ex-boyfriend and all the other people involved in harassing her also learned some useful lessons that will change their future behavior.

The signs of cyberbullying

The post on the PC Pandora Blog, “The signs of cyberbullying,” refers to an article by Elizabeth Wasserman, “Warning signs: Is Your Child Having Cyber Issues?”  The original article gives a good list of some of the signs that your child might be having trouble dealing with cyber bullies.  The follow-up post refers to the PC Pandora software that will alert parents if their child is either being the victim of cyberbullying or is even a cyberbully him or herself. The signs they listed were: * Changed work habits, grades slipping, failing tests. * Losing sleep or sleeping too much. * Increased insecurity or irritability.

I would add withdrawal and lack of communication.  These warning signs are really some of the warning signs that teenagers are having problems with any issue they can’t resolve by themselves, not only cyberbullying.  They’re tip-offs that parents need to talk more with their children and find out what’s going on.

However, the solutions suggested by the experts in the article fall short in the real-world.  They all stem from the ideas that kids are experts and parents should not upset or pressure their children too much.  Instead, parents should only make what I think of as weak suggestions.

However, suggestions are nice but are usually not enough.  Most children may be more expert than their parents about technology but: 1. They don’t know what’s best for them.  I hope that as parents with much broader experience, we know a lot that our children don’t and they have already had the opportunity to see that. 2. They’re not more expert than we are about dealing with bullies.  I hope we have many ideas they haven’t thought about, even if that might mean they would have to go outside their comfort zones or we might have to intervene.

We may have to work hard to get our kids to tell us or to problem solve with us.  How many of us told our parents when we had trouble?  But that’s the universal task.  Their liking it or not is not the most important criterion.

I know parents who have even prohibited their children from wasting time on social networks like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.  They want their children to have face to face social activities with real people they can judge face to face.  How’s that for a concept.

I also think that to put a dent in the amount of cyberbullying, we’ll need Federal laws to make it illegal and then the willingness of social networks to turn over records of cyberbullies.  Writing and enforcing these laws will be as difficult as enforcing the libel laws we already have.  We’ll have to distinguish between an angry exchange and a pattern of on-going attacks.

I learned effective techniques to deal with bullies through growing up in New York City, by watching our six children (three girls and three boys) deal with each other and with bullies at school, and through my experience as a coach, psychotherapist and consultant.

Parenting Bully-Proof Kids: Stop School Bullies in Their Tracks

My new soft cover book, “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids: Stop School Bullies in Their Tracks,” is ready to ship.  It’s in plenty of time to help you handle the bullies you face during the holiday season and to give as presents to those in need.  Please see the details, including the Table of Contents and questions for reading groups, on the products and resources page. “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids: Stop School Bullies in Their Tracks” is a companion to “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks.”  It shows you how to guide your children and teenagers to live a bully-free life. Your children and teens will probably face or witness: * Physical violence, verbal abuse and emotional intimidation. * Anger, hate, harassment and hazing. * Name-calling, put-downs, scorn, and ostracism. * Two-faced friends and anonymous cyber-bullies. * Peer pressure and destructive media influences.

Good parenting requires you to teach them how to use other tactics and techniques to stop bullies in their tracks, as well as to maintain their independence, confidence and self-esteem, and to promote their emotional development. That's necessary preparation for them to succeed in the adult world at work and in personal relationships – e.g., with husbands, wives, partners, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends and neighbors.

Six case studies will teach you how to help them deal with: * Taunting, teasing and fighting. * A venomous Queen Bee. * Emotional blackmail. * A manipulative control-freak who pretends to be a friend. * School administrators. * The most important decision for teenagers. * Self-bullying.

Some of the other sections are: * What to do when Peaceful Methods aren’t Effective. * Tactics That Don’t Work. * Success Guidelines and Tactics. * Methods to Deal with Teasing. * Recognizing if Someone is a True Friend. * A Teenager who Won’t Try Hard at School.

~~~ "Create an isle of song in a sea of shouts."  Rabindranath Tagore ~~~

We'll make it easy for you to get copies for everyone on your gift list by shipping directly to them.  Simply order the number of copies you want and immediately send me an e-mail with the addresses of each of your lucky friends.

Of course, you can also get the personal coaching you need for your specific situation.

Best wishes for a joyous, bully-free life, Ben