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What's New @ Soul Shoppe!
Our 10th Year Anniversary
As we wrap up our tenth year in business, we are proud of all that we accomplished in the 2009-10 school year! Because of you, we reached over 43,000 elementary students in five different states. Thank you for joining us on our journey to bring more character and connection to classrooms and playgrounds everywhere.
Soul Shoppe Licensing
As we celebrate our 10th anniversary milestone, Soul Shoppe is embracing some changes. Beginning the 2010-11 school year, Soul Shoppe will be licensing use of programs. We are currently setting up a training and certification process that people interested in facilitating Soul Shoppe throughout the country can participate in. If you are interested in getting more info on our Licensing Program, please contact the office info@soulshoppe.com
The following article was written by Soul Shoppe Facilitator Amy MacClain. To learn more about Amy and her Parenting Program, checkout www.amymacclain.com
There’s a dramatic rise in concern about bullying lately. With recent events in Massachusetts and Virginia, it seems like even People Magazine has a tragic bullying article in every edition. Thankfully, people are giving bullying the amount of attention it needs. Unfortunately, with the rise in concern, there seems to be a dramatic rise in blame and anger too. click here to continue reading I’m not advocating that we don’t get angry about bullying, it’s an epidemic problem in our country. But let us direct our anger toward the real issues, the causes underlying bullying behavior, instead of just the “bullies,” who are actually victims as well. When we address that powerfully, we will truly be solving the problem.
Bullying happens because people get hurt. They don’t know what to do with their hurt, angry, lonely, jealous, sad or embarrassed feelings, so they keep them bottled up, hoping they’ll just go away. They think maybe if we just ignore it and move on, it won’t matter. They get advised to ignore it and move on by most well meaning but tragically under-attentive adults. Bullying happens because children learn to cover up, ignore and make nice, or to “let off steam” by yelling, taunting, even physically hurting someone else. They learn to avoid the pain of unpopularity by making someone else the target. Bullying happens because children are learning the wrong ways to make the pain go away.
In the brain, bullying is a defensive neural response to an actual or perceived lack of safety. There is literally a part of your brain (your limbic system) that is constantly sensing whether or not you are safe, and governing which parts of your brain are active based on your safety level. When you feel safe, your cortex is activated, allowing you access to your rational thinking, judgment, and problem-solving abilities. When you feel threatened, unsafe, or even just “disconnected,” your limbic system releases a chemical that basically cuts off access to your rational brain and puts you in a defensive state. In that state, controlled by a completely different part of your brain called your brain stem, you are basically capable of three responses: fighting, fleeing or freezing. And just think how sophisticated we are in the ways we argue, walk away, or just shut down in any given moment of distress! So to put it bluntly, we are practically incapable of being rational when we feel threatened, especially when our cognitive development is not yet complete (by the way, our brains do not fully mature until around the age of 25).
So the problem of bullying is not just a bunch of mean people, horribly raised by their unconscientious parents. The real problem of bullying is that as adults, as community members, parents, teachers, administrators, neighbors, we don’t seem to be asking the right questions when bullying happens. We rightfully want to stop the behavior immediately, but imagine bandaging up a person who has deep internal wounds just so the blood won’t show. We would never do that. But we are doing that when we shut down, punish, and incarcerate people for bullying without looking to how to solve what’s making them bully in the first place.
The right questions to combat bullying look like this: What’s causing the pain? How can we teach children and ourselves to handle our behavior and emotions appropriately, compassionately? Where are we going wrong?
The answers are complex. Sadly, there’s no quick solution to the problem of bullying. It has to come on the community level. Parents today are often carrying two jobs just to make ends meet. We are not taught, as parents, how to handle our own emotions. We don’t have time, as teachers, to teach emotional responsibility in a year where we barely have time to add in anything not related to the latest testing standards. Administrators are fighting off lawsuits and injunctions and strikes.
The solution comes when we model the compassion we are looking for. When you see off track behavior, whether it’s your toddler or your teen, move in closer. Stop the behavior first, of course, but stop it compassionately. Let the child know that you cannot let them hurt someone else, but don’t shame them or dump your anger into their already triggered brains. Create a connection with that child by showing them that you care about what’s making them upset. Ask what they might be wanting in that moment, and help them find a way to get their need met. If you can’t help them get their need met, empathize with them, that sometimes life is hard and you understand why they might be angry or sad about it. Listen to what makes them upset. When working with pre-teens or teens, before you judge them, try to remember what it was like for you at that age, and ask them about their lives. Then give them tools for understanding themselves. Teach them about how the brain works, let them know that there are healthy ways to release their anger and frustration. Talk to them about what might work for them. Above all, acknowledge that people are mean and unfair and unconscious all the time, it’s not just them, and we all have to make wise choices to keep it from spiraling out of control.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to solving bullying. There is so much to do on the family level, on the school level, the community level and beyond. But if we all started today with some compassion, with a few right questions, with some techniques for healthy expression of our problems and feelings and with some tools for making changes right now, we could move the mountain today!
Bullying Prevention Conference
For the third year in a row, Soul Shoppe will be co-hosting the Bullying Prevention Conference along with Alameda County Office of Education on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010. This year will combine both elementary and secondary levels with workshops that focus on the needs of both levels. Look for more details in the coming months.
Hope you have a fun and rejuvenating summer!
