There’s no easy answer to end bullying
SASKATOON — Brian Trainor went to school with bullies. Years later, patrolling Saskatoon as a cop, he saw those same guys again.
“There were a lot of tough kids who went to our school and we were picked on, so I knew what a bully was — and then all of a sudden I’m a cop and I’m dealing with the same people I went to grade school with,” said Trainor, a retired police officer who writes and speaks about bullying.
“Now, as adults, these guys are pimps or were arrested for murder or assault or weapons. It connected everything ... Bullying is a learned behaviour.”
This summer the provincial government launched a public consultation tour aimed at gathering input for its upcoming anti-bullying strategy, which seems more pressing given recent high-profile incidents.
A North Battleford mother said her son, 15-year-old Todd Loik, killed himself earlier this month because of relentless bullying. Last week, RCMP charged 11 teenagers from Lanigan with numerous assault-related offences following a freshie-week hazing incident that injured several other teens.
The incidents, along with recent national stories of teen suicides caused by bullying, have some people questioning how youth become bullies and what can be done to stop it before more parents have to bury their children.
“We’re not born bullies,” said Trainor, who wrote the youngadult novel Bully 4 U and tours Saskatchewan speaking to students about cyber-bullying and the consequences for victims as well as their tormentors.
“It’s learned in the home. But if you can learn to bully, you can unlearn it.”
Empathy — understanding another person’s feelings and experiences — is key to preventing and combating bullying, and that ability has to come from parents, Trainor said. Parents must set a good example and should question and challenge their children if bullying is suspected, he added.
The Restorative Action Program (RAP) was started at Mount Royal Collegiate in 2003 to deal with rampant bullying and violence among students. Three years later, the school noticed significant decreases in violence and conflicts, and RAP now runs in seven Saskatoon schools, each of which has a permanent conflict mediation specialist working with students to develop life skills, mediate conflicts and connect youth to their communities.
“Far too often we talk about how to prevent bullying in terms of what we can do for our kids, but we want to know how we can do this with our kids,” said RAP executive director Winston Blake.
More people are speaking out against bullying and communities are starting to address the issue as a systemic problem that doesn’t just affect a few people, Blake said.
“Society is realizing that this is an important issue and this needs to be addressed and not just passed off to someone else and say, ‘It’s your problem; fix it,’ ” Blake said.
“It’s not a government problem. It’s not a school problem. It’s not a police problem. The problem is all of ours — it’s a community problem.”
“There is no easy answer,” Trainor said.