How Would you Like a Poke In The Eye?

My youngest son has entered the Toastmasters competition at his school here in the SCV. For those of you who may not know what this is here is a brief description; A bunch of elementary school kids write speeches on varying topics and say them to their class. If their class and teacher like the speech then they advance to, in my son's case, saying it before the upper grades. After that if they advance once again they say it before a panel of teachers and the whole school. Next they go to district, then regional and then finally a national competition. It's a pretty cool program for all those up and coming politicians.

Well my youngest decided that he would do his on bullying. You see this has been a rough year for my youngest. He is a big kid and since we have taught him our Christian values he comes off like a gentle giant. He plays with the special needs kids, not cool in elementary school, and just doesn't punk anyone. At one point we contemplated home school because of this. Needless to say the teacher, once we made him aware of what our intentions were, took care of the situation. So when it came time for our son's persuasive speech he decided to do it on "Bullying". I am putting below his speech word for word because.......for one I am very proud of him. It takes a lot of courage to endure what he has endured this year and then to get up in front of those kids who were bullying him and tell them the effects of what they did.....well let's just say it's one of those proud parent moments. Secondly I am posting it here because this is an important topic. These days with the shootings at Northern Illinois University and West Virgina it is a topic that needs to be discussed. For some reason we as parents have either forgotten how to parent or are afraid to. We here in the SCV have kids who bully because of the material things like clothes, iPods, do you look like Tom Brady and stupid stuff like that. It may not be different from where you at so please read it and take it to heart.

Bullying and the effects of being bullied

I am going to talk to you today about bullying and the effects of being bullied. The reason I chose this topic is because I have been bullied and I am just telling you it hurts. Sometimes it hurts you physically and mentally. It can hurt physically because sometimes it beat you up. It hurts mentally because sometimes they just make fun of you. So in talking to you I will explain what bully’s look like, what bullies act like, and why we shouldn't bully.

The dictionary says bullies are a blustering browbeating person, one habitually cruel to others who are weaker.[1] Wikipedia’s definition is Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation.[2] My definition of Bully’s are people who hurt people by calling them names, and kick them or punch them to feel less confident about themselves. I read an article that said that research shows that most adults who bully act like they have full authority and really want to do damage. Also bullies can be boys or girls. North Dakota State University said this about Bullies, “Bullies put dirt in your face, make fun of you in front of other people, and force you to give up your lunch money to them.”[3] In my experience Bully’s form by trying to get attention by making fun of other children. A lot of times bullies call people names and beat them up just because they want to look cool. KidsHealth.Org says this about bulling, “Sometimes bullies make you do stuff you don’t want to do, like to get off the basketball court.”[4] In my opinion even though bullies think their being cool by doing this stuff they really aren’t cool at all. Sometimes the bullies are being bullied so they take their anger out on other kids.

So now that we have looked at who can be a bully let me tell you what being a bully is. There are two types of bullying, physical, and mental. The physical aspect of bullying is when kids push, hit, or make physical contact with you. The mental aspect of bullying is when kids call you names, make fun of you or mess around with your property. Sometimes bullies make fun of or beat up other kids just because they want attention. Sometimes bullies will pretend to be your friend just so they can make fun of you and look cool to their other friends. Nobully.org says this about bullying “Bullying is when someone keeps doing or saying things to have power over another person.”[5] An example of this is when someone tells you to do something you don’t want to do and if you don’t they will threaten to beat you up. A new type of bullying is called cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is when groups of people get together online to intimidate and threaten another person through the use of Instant messaging, Blogging, text messages, and E-mails. Wikipedia says this about Cyber-Bullying, “In order for it to be cyber-bullying, the intent must be to cause emotional distress, and there must be no legitimate purpose to the communication.”[6] One other type of bullying is called hazing. Hazing is when a group of people embarrass you or humiliate you so that you can join a club or organization.

So now I have told you what a bully looks like, what a bully is and now I am going to tell you why you shouldn't bully. You shouldn’t bully other people because it hurts their feelings and destroys their self confidence. Life after adult bulling.com says “He or she, referring to the bully, wants to be popular so they bully then they make other people less confident.”[7] Destroying peoples self confidence should never be someone’s goal. Most of the time the people who were had their life changed because their feelings were really hurt. We should never want to hurt someone’s feelings and if we do we should apologize. Often times those people who were bullies went on to getting in bigger trouble sometimes resulting in going to jail. Some bullies grow up to be criminals because of the same things they did to kids in school continue to be what they did as an adult. Another reason why you shouldn’t bully is because it causes people to be depressed. Depression comes from constantly being put down day after day. From experience I can tell you this is not what you want to go through every day. I read in an article that a kid even committed suicide because of how mean bullies were to him. In that same article it said that some kids have such mean bullies they hurt themselves.

So in conclusion the reason I have talked to you about bullying is so that all of you will see that you shouldn’t become a bully because it makes the people who are being bullied feel bad about themselves. I hope that by explaining what being a bully is, why you shouldn’t be a bully and the effects of it that you wouldn’t want to bully anyone. I also hope that through this speech I have convinced you that you shouldn’t bully people because everybody is created equal. After all the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”[8] I believe we all should be happy, don’t you?

Thank you

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[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bully

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying

[3]www.ad.ndsu.edu\pubs\yf\famsci\fs570w.htm

[4] www.kidshealth.org\kid\feeling\emmotions\bullies.html

[5]www.nobully.org.nz\advicek.htm#one

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-bullying

[7] www.lifeafteradultbullying.com/620/index.html

[8] http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration_transcript.html

After reading this please consider the people around you. If you see some people bullying stop them. If you are a parent of a bully, stop them. For you parents out there I just want to encourage you to parent your kids. You are the adult, you are the one setting the rules and you are in control. I'll be honest with you, while my son was being bullied I was not mad at the kid bullying my son, I was mad at the parents for not being parents.