#376 Wearing Your Pink For Anti-Bullying

Life By Design Podcast

Wednesday, February 26th, was Pink shirt day in Canada. If you're not familiar with what this represents, as the story goes... In 2007 two high school students in Nova Scotia witnessed other classmates bullying a grade 9 for wearing a pink shirt. In response to this, the two who witnessed the bullying, went to a nearby discount store and purchased fifty pink shirts to distribute to their friends in order to take a stand with the child being bullied. As it turns out, the next day, so many other children got behind this idea that literally, most of the school came dressed in head to toe pink standing in solidarity with the bullied child. An amazing story and touching story, yes... but, what about the underlying issues surrounding bullying? To truly overcome a challenge, you must understand the causes, the proper course of action, and the result. As far as we can tell, and from our own personal experience, bullying comes in many forms - of course, the easiest and most popular example is a child taunting or terrorizing another child, usually for some arbitrary reason. But what about other kinds of bullying in our culture? Could it be considered bullying when a parent humiliates or threatens to hit their child? Is it bullying when you are endlessly humiliated or mocked when you have a different opinion than someone online? Is retaliation OK? Does it make you a bad person? As you can easily see, not simple questions to answer, yet necessary (and rarely discussed) when "awareness" is brought to a subject. What we covered

• The definition of bullying and how it applies to all aspects of modern life.
• How, we believe, to start putting an end to bullying.
• The correct use of force in this situation.