Bullying, Why Does It Happen And One Way To Handle It

My daughter is 10 years old, but from the time she started school at 5 until 6 months ago, she was bullied. Over the years I have watched and agonized as she receded into her shell and dreaded going to school, often coming home in tears and always bemoaning her lack of friends.

In the past I have tried many different kinds of solutions, she joined a self defence ‘karate’ style class which had an ‘anti bullying’ program within, giving her pointers on how to handle a bully, for instance, don’t respond to a bully, tell a teacher what’s happening and other seemingly reasonable advice. The only thing was, not responding to the bully was difficult, they would just keep on and on until they got a reaction (kids don’t tend to give up easily) and of course telling the teacher means losing face with her classmates, the secret playground code of honour is still very much intact today.

Other advice was for her to pretend to be invisible - so the bully wouldn’t see her and to keep silent and out of the way of everyone. Good advice, except that often the bullies actively seek out their favourite prey and therefore this particular strategy can also fail.

Perhaps one of the most creative plans undertaken by my daughter was to reinvent herself as a tomboy so that she could live on the edge of the boy’s playgroup. This works for only a short time because unless the girl is really interested in boy stuff, she is soon found to be a fraud and so excluded from the group.

In a world where suggested actions sometimes don’t work and the end result is a child who is miserable and who doesn’t make friends easily, rarely gets invited to birthday parties and ultimately allows themselves to be controlled by other ‘friends’ in the vain hope of fitting in somewhere. What can you do?

Did I consider switching schools? Yes I did, I approached another school and while they were willing to take her, my daughter didn’t wish to swap schools and further, the Principal of the new school pointed out that in the case of children who were bullied, if they change schools, the situation itself may not change - it’s almost as if these children have a silent radar shouting ‘bully me, bully me.’

Any parent who has gone through this with their child will know the frustration and helplessness that you feel when they come home in tears after the latest round of being teased.

At last, I found help

So - why am I writing this article. Well, I found something which helped, it started working for her from day one, and continues to work for her to this day. She is no longer bullied - there is occasional teasing - which is different and every child has this happen to them now and then. Plus, she is slowly but surely forming new friendships with other children on an equal footing and by this I mean, she is not swapping or giving over control of herself to another person, in return for friendship. In others words she is no longer the victim.

The real reason why bullying occurs

If you have a child who has this problem, then prepare yourself to think a little differently about the situation and mull over what I am about to tell you.

The problem is not your child, and it’s not even so much the bully. It’s energy, female and male energy to be exact. Every person on this planet is made up of a mix of feminine and masculine energy, when this energy mix is unbalanced strange things can happen.

For instance, and this is the exact explanation I gave my daughter, physically she is a girl, but her masculine energy was very high and her feminine energy was very low. So, if other children looked at her, they registered that she looked like a girl, but her energy signal was what? That’s right, they could sense a male energy, they sensed a boy - the fit was all wrong and kids being kids, they do not wish to associate with other children who don’t ‘fit’.

What you can do to stop bullying

The answer was to balance her energy, the magic numbers seem to be +10 and +4. So, we adjusted her feminine energy to +10 and adjusted her masculine energy to +4. In a male, it would be male energy at a +10 and female energy at a +4.

Why are these numbers ideal? Simply put, a girl will be feminine, but not a push over, hence the need for the male energy. In a boy, the feminine energy can enhance his sensitivity and creativity in a positive way.

I will be posting a series of articles on this topic over the next week or two, with reference to the how an imbalance can affect relationships and work situations in adults.

In the meantime, visit my blog at www.soundsfromsourceacademy.tumblr.com where my colleague Sheila Kennedy-Robinson has written a special piece called ‘Let’s make friends’, which guides both child and parent through a process to assist with rebalancing your child’s energy.