Based on this letter, it appears that bullying is beginning to get the attention it needs.  Let's all pull together.  Following is the content of the letter

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

October 26, 2010

Dear Colleague:

Still reeling from gay student Tyler Clementi’s fatal plunge off the George Washington Bridge, New Jersey legislators this week proposed the toughest law against bullying in the nation. The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights is society’s strongest message yet that schools are expected to pay close attention to the social relationships of students, an idea that took hold after the 1999 Columbine shootings.

The “Lord of the Flies” model is out. Enough child suicides have shown that students cannot be left to their own cruel devices. Without monitoring or consequences attached, school bullying policies often went unenforced. This new bill goes much further, pledging to discipline teachers and administrators if they indulge or ignore student bullies.

The bad news: half of all high school students, regardless of gender or type of school, say they have bullied someone in the past year, and 47% of students say they have been bullied in a way that seriously upset them. The good news: overall rates of bullying are down from 2008, according to the Josephson Institute's comprehensive Ethics of American Youth survey.

Hopefully, parents are seeing the bullying-proof kit and downloading the kit.  We all need to get behind this movement and work together to end bullying,  If you are not a parent, encourage everyone you know to get the kit and use it. 

We all know that bullying is all around us.  We-as parents-need to help our children become resilient to and hopefully immune to being bullied.  One of the best tools for bully resistance is having an intact self-esteem.  As parents, we can help our children form and keep strong senses of self, and strong senses of positives about themselves.  We are offering the following tips to parents to help them help their children with their self-esteem.

Bully no more…

Tips for helping your child’s self esteem

There has been a lot of emotion and activity about bullying in the last week.  A man in Florida was so overwhelmed by what he thought his daughter was going through that he took matters into his own hands and went on the school bus to confront the bullies.  It more or less backfired on him.  There is a lot of emotion around this.  Was he right/was he wrong?  Lots of feeling on both sides of the question.

It seems that we need to start thinking about prevention from the first step.  That, simply put, means what can I do about bullying.  As a parent how much do I know about what my child is experiencing at school, with friends, or just in the world.  If my child is different  or has a special condition, what responsibility do I have to help others understand that difference so that it can be accepted?  How active do I need to be or not need to be in my child's school, other activities.

What is bullying?

1.    Bullying involves repeated acts of physical, emotional, or social behavior that are meant to be harmful, controlling, and hurtful.