Kindness Challenge Confronts Bullying Where It Happens Most

A heartbreaking rash of suicides among adolescents and young teens illustrates how debilitating bullying and cyberbullying, the online form of childhood hazing, can be. A new campaign to combat it is aimed at where bullying most often starts, according to research, most pervasive: in middle schools.

The idea behind the Middle School Kindness Challenge, a project of the nonprofit group Stand for Children, is to make learning about kindness and being kinder to one another as much a part of daily school activities as reading and arithmetic. By April 15, the group hopes every middle school in America will sign up for the free, 30-day, research based online program to teach and foster kindness.

The challenge focuses on four areas: strengthening relationships among kids, teaching them to develop positive rather than negative mindsets, fostering empathy and spreading kindness online to confront cyberbullying.

In traditional childhood bullying, targeted kids know who the aggressor is, and as terrible as it is to be afraid to go to recess or to the lunchroom, kids could find a safe haven. But in cyberbullying — which 33 percent of American kids have experienced and 12 percent have admitted to doing, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center — there’s no escape in a cyber-obsessed culture. Patch is taking a closer look at the problem in a months-long reporting project, “The Menace of Bullies: Can We Stop This?”

On a basic level, one way to combat bullying and cyberbullying is for children and the adults they emulate to be kinder.

Being kind and being nice aren’t the same.

“Kindness requires practice,” Stand for Children said on the Kindness challenge website. “It requires mastery of essential life skills like active listening, expressing gratitude, and self-regulation of big emotions in life and online.”

ACTION: Encourage your children's schools to take part in the Middle School Kindness Challenge. Do you think it will work? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Schools signing up for the Kindness Challenge are asked to develop a “kindness ritual” that will become institutionalized — for example, a kindness expo or a kindness club.

SEE ALSO: Indiana Teacher Incorporates Compassion In Curriculum

But does it work? A growing body of research suggests it does.

A 2012 study suggests that “students who performed kind acts experienced significantly bigger increases in peer acceptance,” which the authors said reduced the likelihood they would be bullied.

The U.S. Department of Education says that students learn best in environments where they feel safe, supported, challenged and accepted. In a 2016 report, the DOE said such environments make students “more likely to engage in curriculum, achieve academically and develop positive relationships [and] less likely to exhibit problem behaviors.”

THE MENACE OF BULLIES: PATCH SERIES

Over the coming year, Patch will look at the roles society plays in bullying and a child's unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes that we might offer solutions that save lives.

Do you have a story to tell? Email us at bullies@patch.com.

EARLIER IN THIS SERIES

• Bullied To Death: When Kids Kill With Words
• The Bully Menace: What Patch Readers Said
• Teen Tells Bullies In Video: 'Every Day, I Wear Your Words'
• Poetry Teacher Helps Bullied Kids Express How Much It Hurts

Photo by Lisa F. Young via Shutterstock