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Bullied:
What Every Parent, Teacher and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear
by Carrie Goldman
Nonfiction
HarperOne; August 14, 2012
Hardcover
368 pages
From the inside flap:
Carrie Goldman became an unexpected voice for the antibullying movement after her blog post about her daughter Katie’s bullying experience went viral and an online community of support generated international attention. In Bullied, Goldman brings together the expertise of leading authorities with the candid accounts of families dealing firsthand with peer victimization to present proven strategies and concrete tools for teaching children how to speak up and carry themselves with confidence; call each other out on cruelty; resolve conflict; cope with teasing, taunting, physical abuse, and cyberbullying; and be smart consumers of technology and media. As a mother, she calls on us all–families, schools, communities, retailers, celebrities, and media–to fiercely examine our own stereotypes and embrace our joint responsibility for creating a culture of acceptance and respect.
For parents, educators, and anyone still wrestling with past experiences of victimization and fear, Bullied is an eye-opening, prescriptive, and ultimately uplifting guide to raising diverse, empathetic, tolerant kids in a caring and safe world.
In the Introduction to Bullied, Dorothy Espelage (Ph.D. and Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) laments that after almost twenty years of research on bullying and prevention, we still have not made enough progress in creating safe schools and preventing suicide among children. Espelage points out that although the research has been extensive, there is a major lack of communication between researchers, practitioners, and parents–research reports tend to be shared among the scholars that write them, and are not translated into solutions or made available to the people who need to use them in schools. The books that are written by teachers, parents, and community members tend to ignore the years of research that has been done by psychologists.
When Goldman’s blog post about her daughter being bullied for her love of Star Wars went viral, she decided to talk to everyone she possibly could about bullying and prevention–researchers, teachers, and parents–in order to bring the two worlds together and provide a book that combines recent research findings and solutions that can be implemented at home and in schools.
Goldman did a fantastic job. Bullied is accessible, interesting, and provides a wealth of information about bullying and prevention. It includes chapters highlighting the kids who are at the highest risk for being bullied and how we can change that as a society; there are chapters on intervention, prevention, and reconciliation; and at the back of the book there are all kinds of resources for further reading (online and off), including a list of books for kids to read (sorted by age group). There are also numerous personal stories from people who have bullied and from people who have been bullied scattered throughout the book.
I highly recommend Bullied to anyone who has children or to anyone who works with children. It is well written, insightful, and very informative.
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(To learn more about Carrie Goldman, please visit her author website where you will also find a link to her personal blog.)
**If you choose to purchase this title using the links below, I will receive a small percentage of the sale (to be used toward site maintenance and buying more books).
Amazon | Powell’s Books | IndieBound
I received a copy of this book from the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review.
September 27, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Bullied sounds amazing. You’re right, parents and educators need to be more aware of the resources available when it comes to bullying. Children too. I’m going to see if my library has this.
September 27, 2012 at 6:53 pm
I thought I knew a lot about bullying and psychology involved, but I learned quite a bit from this book. It’s very good. Let me know what you think when you read it.
September 28, 2012 at 10:49 am
Will do!
September 28, 2012 at 10:51 am
This does sound really good. I will have to tell my friend in the UK whose currently doing a PhD on bullying in schools to check it out. Have you seen the documentary Bully? I think it’s much more hyper focused, but it was really powerful.
September 28, 2012 at 6:31 pm
I haven’t seen that doc, but I’ll look for it now. Thanks!
September 28, 2012 at 5:58 pm
This is a topic that people just didn’t discuss much when I was a child (which really wasn’t all that long ago) so I’m thrilled that more and more people are taking action to prevent it today.
Thanks for being on the tour! I’m featuring your review on TLC’s Facebook page today.
September 28, 2012 at 6:24 pm
I’m really glad that it’s being taken more seriously now, too. Thank you for featuring my review on Facebook!
October 1, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Thanks for reviewing this! I am going to recommend it to my colleagues at my school. We have instituted an anti-bullying program this year, but this would help all of the teachers be able to better understand bullying as well as provide some solutions.
October 1, 2012 at 3:59 pm
This would be a really good book for your colleagues to read. I’m glad you checked out my review!
October 1, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Heather,
I think that book sounds really good! I taught elementary school for 5 years, and I think that bullying is a tough topic for teachers to tackle (AHHHH alliteration galore, sorry!). But it’s true. Teachers have usually just a small amount of bullying training, that usually when they don’t step in it’s because they don’t know how to deal with the situation. I also know that if an event happens off campus, or on campus but while leaving school, it’s not always known WHO needs to deal with the situation. It sounds like a really beneficial book for those working with students!
Rebecca
October 1, 2012 at 4:02 pm
I love alliteration.
This book talks about both of those things: the lack of training, and knowing how to handle stuff that happens off-campus. It also talks about how to determine what is actual bullying and what is just normal childhood teasing. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!
October 11, 2012 at 12:20 pm
My kids haven’t encountered bullying that I’m aware of, but this sounds like a good book to prepare for the perils of larger schools. One thing I wonder, given incidences of bullying linked to gay teens committing suicide, is whether society turns a blind eye to certain entire issues, and only grudgingly comes to examine them when something horrible happens. So for example, the kids persecuted for being different is tolerated if their “difference” is looked down upon by the adults in the community. At any rate, I’m sure I can learn a lot from this book. Thanks for the review!
October 11, 2012 at 12:27 pm
*nods* You’ve nailed one of the reasons. The book is definitely worth reading–it also goes into how your kids can help others who are being bullied, too.
October 12, 2012 at 11:23 am
Not on the same kind of bullying, but another awful, tragic story that just broke today. Now I really want to read this book.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/teen-who-posted-anti-bullying-youtube-video-kills-herself-173788701.html
October 12, 2012 at 11:44 am
Oh no…this is absolutely heartbreaking.
October 12, 2012 at 1:16 pm
If you watch the video, it’s tragic. I really don’t understand how the people bullying her could be so malicious. I never had to deal with anything that far-reaching at that age.
October 12, 2012 at 1:19 pm
I did watch it, and I was going to say the same thing–I will never understand how people can be so cruel. Being cruel must be learned; I can’t imagine where those kids have learned to be so awful. I dealt with some pretty awful bullying as a teenager, but NOTHING like this. Where is the empathy?
October 12, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Possibly, what used to be verbal has now become visual — nasty remarks are now there to be seen by all instead of just said to the victim or tossed around behind their backs. But the Internet allows these kinds of things to be even more autocatalytic and retraumatize the victim again and again. Like, following her from school to school out of sheer spite? For WHAT!? It makes me sick.
October 12, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Exactly. It’s just plain evil.