The Renegade's Guide to Stopping Bullying
This is an interesting book in that it takes a different approach from many other such books. This one places the emphasis on pro-active techniques rather than post-active techniques of dealing with bullying.
The author himself had been bullied when young. Some of the main things he points out are:
Victims of bullying need lots of friends.
Bullying thrives by targeting outsiders.
Parents need to become involved with stopping bullying of their child.
The author has the Bigger Shark theory of dealing with bullies.
Being bullied lowers the quality of lives of the victim.
The use of criminal psychology is helpful in dealing with bullies.
There are several approaches to dealing bullying in school which range from gentle verbal approachs on through the third, most active approach.
One of the most interesting approaches is that if the bully physically attacks a child, it is perfectly fine if the child retaliates in kind. (If he or she is able, of course.)
The author places a lot of emphasis on using leadership skills to deal with bullies and to prevent bulling from starting in the first place.
He distinguishes between 'nice' and 'good' would-be victims.
He examines problems on school buses and what can be done about them pro-actively.
He also discusses cyberbullying and what can be done about it.
The feeling I get from this book is that the author believes in self-empowerment, that the bullying victim needs to get his or her self-esteem back and that this can be done by working with both adults and other students.
I think a lot of his ideas about what to do, especially how to pro-actively handle bullying at school, are quite good although I doubt they would work all the time and they would depend heavily on the willingness of the school administration to actually do something.
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